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The Letter
By Edgar Lee Masters
What does one gain by living? What by dying
Is lost worth having? What the daily things
Lived through together make them worth the while
For their sakes or for life's? Where's the denying
Of souls through separation? There's your smile!
And your hands' touch! And the long day that brings
Half uttered nothings of delight! But then
Now that I see you not, and shall again
Touch you no more - memory can possess
Your soul's essential self, and none the less
You live with me. I therefore write to you
This letter just as if you were away
Upon a journey, or a holiday;
And so I'll put down everything that's new
In this secluded village, since you left. ...
Now let me think! Well, then, as I remember,
After ten days the lilacs burst in bloom.
We had spring all at once - the long December
Gave way to sunshine. Then we swept your room,
And laid your things away. And then one morning
I saw the mother robin giving warning
To little bills stuck just above the rim
Of that nest which you watched while being built,
Near where she sat, upon a leafless limb,
With folded wings against an April rain.
On June the tenth Edward and Julia married,
I did not go for fear of an old pain.
I was out on the porch as they drove by,
Coming from church. I think I never scanned
A girl's face with such sunny smiles upon it
Showing beneath the roses on her bonnet -
I went into the house to have a cry.
A few days later Kimbrough lost his wife.
Between housework and hoeing in the garden
I read Sir Thomas More and Goethe's life.
My heart was numb and still I had to harden
All memory or die. And just the same
As when you sat beside the window, passed
Larson, the cobbler, hollow-chested, lamed.
He did not die till late November came.
Things did not come as Doctor Jones forecast,
'Twas June when Mary Morgan had her child.
Her husband was in Monmouth at the time.
She had no milk, the baby is not well.
The Baptist Church has got a fine new bell.
And after harvest Joseph Clifford tiled
His bottom land. Then Judy Heaton's crime
Has shocked the village, for the monster killed
Glendora Wilson's father at his door -
A daughter's name was why the blood was spilled.
I could go on, but wherefore tell you more?
The world of men has gone its olden way
With war in Europe and the same routine
Of life among us that you knew when here.
This gossip is not idle, since I say
By means of it what I would tell you, dear:
I have been near you, dear, for I have been
Not with you through these things, but in despite
Of living them without you, therefore near
In spirit and in memory with you.
* * * * *
Do you remember that delightful Inn
At Chester and the Roman wall, and how
We walked from Avon clear to Kenilworth?
And afterward when you and I came down
To London, I forsook the murky town,
And left you to quaint ways and crowded places,
While I went on to Putney just to see
Old Swinburne and to look into his face's
Changeable lights and shadows and to seize on
A finer thing than any verse he wrote?
(Oh beautiful illusions of our youth!)
He did not see me gladly. Talked of treason
To England's greatness. What was Camden like?
Did old Walt Whitman smoke or did he drink?
And Longfellow was sweet, but couldn't think.
His mood was crusty. Lowell made him laugh!
Meantime Watts-Dunton came and broke in half
My visit, so I left.
The thing was this:
None of this talk was Swinburne any more
Than some child of his loins would take his hair,
Eyes, skin, from him in some pangenesis, -
His flesh was nothing but a poor affair,
A channel for the eternal stream - his flesh
Gave nothing closer, mind you, than his book,
But rather blurred it; even his eyes' look
Confused "Madonna Mia" from its fresh
And liquid meaning. So I knew at last
His real immortal self is in his verse.
* * * * *
Since you have gone I've thought of this so much.
I cannot lose you in this universe -
I first must lose myself. The essential touch
Of soul possession lies not in the walk
Of daily life on earth, nor in the talk
Of daily things, nor in the sight of eyes
Looking in other eyes, nor daily bread
Broken together, nor the hour of love
When flesh surrenders depths of things divine
Beyond all vision, as they were the dream
Of other planets, but without these even
In death and separation, there is heaven:
By just that unison and its memory
Which brought our lips together. To be free
From accidents of being, to be freeing
The soul from trammels on essential being,
Is to possess the loved one. I have strayed
Into the only heaven God has made:
That's where we know each other as we are,
In the bright ether of some quiet star,
Communing as two memories with each other.
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