"Here each branch Sway'd with a glitter all its crowded leaves, And brushed the soft divine hair touching them In ruffled clusters....
Suddenly the moon Smoothed herself out of vapor-drift and made The deep night full of pleasure in the eye Of her sweet motion. Not alone she came Leading the starlight with her like a song: And not a bud of all that undergrowth But crisped and tingled out an ardent edge As the light steeped it: over whose massed leaves The portals of illimitable sleep Faded in heaven."
That is love in its moonrise, not its sunrise stage: yet you see. Beloved, how it takes possession of its dark world, quite as fully as the brighter sunlight could do. And if I speak of doubts, I mean no twilight and no suspicions: nor by darkness do I mean any unhappiness.
My blue-moon has come, leading the starlight with her like a song. Am I not happy enough to be patiently yours before you know it? Good things which are to be, before they happen are already true. Nothing is so true as you are, except my love for you and yours for me. Good-night, good-night.
Beloved: I heard somebody yesterday speak of you as "charming"; and I began wondering to myself was that the word which could ever have covered my thoughts of you? I do not know whether you ever charmed me, except in the sense of charming which means magic and spell-binding. _That_ you did from the beginning, dearest. But I think I held you at first in too much awe to discover charm in you: and at last knew you too much to the depths to name you by a word so lightly used for the surface of things. Yet now a charm in you, which is not _all_ you, but just a part of you, comes to light, when I see you wondering whether you are really loved, or whether, Beloved, I only _like_ you rather well!
Well, if you will be so "charming," I am helpless: and can do nothing, nothing, but pray for the blue-moon to rise, and love you a little better because you have some of that divine foolishness which strikes the very wise ones of earth, and makes them kin to weaker mortals who otherwise might miss their "charm" altogether.
Truly, Beloved, if I am happy, it is because I am also your most patiently loving.
Beloved: The certainty which I have now that you love me so fills all my thoughts, I cannot understand you being in any doubt on your side. What must I do that I do not do, to show gladness when we meet and sorrow when we have to part? I am sure that I make no pretense or disguise, except that I do not stand and wring my hands before all the world, and cry "Don't go!"--which has sometimes been in my mind, to be kept _not_ said!