Sonnets from the Portuguese. XXVIII. My letters! all dead paper,… mute and white!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)

MY letters! all dead paper,… mute and white!—

And yet they seem alive and quivering

Against my tremulous hands which loose the string

And let them drop down on my knee to-night.

This said,… he wished to have me in his sight

Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring

To come and touch my hand … a simple thing,

Yet I wept for it! this,… the paper’s light …

Said, Dear, I love thee; and I sank and quailed

As if God’s future thundered on my past.

This said, I am thine,—and so its ink has paled

With lying at my heart that beat too fast.

And this … O Love, thy words have ill availed,

If what this said, I dared repeat at last!