Right about this time, one hundred and sixty-six years ago Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett were falling deeper and deeper in love.  Their communication was largely through letters the two writers crafted to each other expressing their deepest feelings openly in a rare manner for the time.

So on this morning about a week from Valentine’s day my heart is awake with these old words of love.  The sentiments and admissions of love and admiration are as current and contemporary as this morning’s sunrise.   What follows are passages from letters exchanged between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett in the month of February in 1846, about seven months before they eloped and were married.

EB to RB Feb 2, 1846
Something, you said yesterday, made me happy – ‘that your liking for me did not come and go’… I can see nothing beyond you…. As to all that was evil and sadness to me, I do not feel it any longer – – it may be raining still, but I am in the shelter and can scarcely tell.

RB to EB Feb 4, 1846
And now, when my whole heart… would find you, and fall on you, and fill forever …I who do love you more at every breath I draw; indeed, yes dearest…. You have all my life bound to yours….

EB to RB Feb 5, 1846
Now think for a moment, and know once for all, how from the beginning to these latter days and through all possible degrees of crisis, you have been to my apprehension and gratitude, the best, most consistent, most noble…. In nothing and
at no moment have you… failed me.

RB to EB Feb 9, 1846
Now I kiss you, and will begin a new thinking of you – and end and begin, going round and round in my circle of discovery.

EB to RB Feb 10, 1846
…Drink to me only with thine eyes…

RB Feb 13, 1846
I shall see you tomorrow and be happy. Today – is it the weather or what? …something depressed me a little – tomorrow brings the remedy for it all. …if my spirits rise they fly to you; if they fall, they hold by you and cease falling.

EB to RB Feb 16, 1846
…I was decided from the first hour when I admitted the possibility of your loving me really…. I am more thine than my own… you are three times as much to me as I can be to you at best and greatest…. I want to see you so much….

RB to EB Feb 19, 1846
My sweetest, best, dearest… I do love you… and adore you more, more by so much more as I see of you, think of you – I am yours…..

EB to RB Feb 19/20, 1846
Best and kindest of all that ever were to be loved in dreams, and wondered at and loved out of them, you are indeed! …you are supernaturally good and kind…

RB to EB Feb 23, 1846
Dear, dear heart of my heart, life of my life, will this last… Can it be meant I shall live this to the end?

EB to RB Feb 24, 1846
I was thinking the other day that certainly and after all (or rather before all) I had loved you all my life unawares, that is the idea of you. I may say before God and you, that of all the vents of my life… nothing has humbled me as much as your love. Right or wrong it may be, but true it is… Your love has been to me like God’s own love, which makes the receivers of it kneelers. Do you want to hear me say I can not love you less…? That is a doubtful phrase. And I can not love you more… is doubtful too… More or less, I really love you

My heart has been broken and put back together so many times.  It bears the scars, hurts and sadness bravely.  No matter how many times love has failed, faltered or ended, it has at the same time brought great joy.  As long as my heart beats I will swoon at the beautiful words of poets, become emotional watching love stories movies and books and always be grateful for my ability to feel deeply. I can’t imagine being any other way.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao Tzu