Love

Only One First Love

/ James Browning / 2 Comments

It has been common remark for me to say “there are days when I was growing up I remember more about than entire years of my adult life”.   It is such a memory I share today. 

It was a few hours before sundown on a late summer Sunday not long after my 13th birthday.  My mother, stepfather, brother and I were going to visit a woman and her two young adult children who still lived at home.  This family had lost the man of the house some months before.  Making a visit “to check on them” was a customary gesture of country kindness in those days. As we were driving up the dirt road to their house I was wishing our visit would be very short and we’d be headed home very soon. 

A line in a Garth Brooks song goes “some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers”.  This was certainly true that afternoon with me not getting my wish for a short visit.  Upon arrival we saw others had also stopped by to visit.  This family of four we met for the first time lived about 50 miles away and included two children.  One was a boy around 9 or 10 years old near my younger brother’s age.  And the other was a girl, but not just any girl. 

Her name was Linda and she looked a little older than her 12 years.  Blossoming from a girl to a woman was just beginning to show itself on her. Once I saw her something came over me I had never experienced before.  I was drawn to her like a nighttime moth to a light.  I had to be near her.  What was instinctively happening was beyond my comprehension, but I didn’t care.  Whatever it was I liked it… a lot! 

Our younger brothers entertained each other while Linda and I walked around the shady yard talking for a while.  Then we sat down on a couple of tree stumps at the edge of the yard for about an hour making small talk, laughing and enjoying each other.  I can’t remember a single thing we talked about, but my memory of her is still vivid today.  She was fair-skinned, tall and skinny with straight brown hair cropped a few inches above her shoulders.  She was pretty, intelligent, funny and sweet.  Being with her seemed almost dream-like as the minutes quickly evaporated.  

After about two hours Linda’s parents yelled for their kids signaling it was time to go home.  For families visiting down south saying goodbye is a fairly lengthy process.  Nothing happens quickly.  Linda and I began to walk slowly toward the house that was about 50 yards away.  With my mind wrapped up completely in the moment I did not notice she had begun to veer toward a big tree between us and everyone else.     

Linda stopped right behind the big tree and asked me if I would write her.  “Of course” I told her and asked if she would write me.  She gently grasped the upper part of my left arm with her right hand and said she’d write.  As she spoke she leaned in close to me in what seemed like slow motion and gave me a quick little kiss right me on the lips.  Later I learned that was her first real kiss just as it was mine.  With her face still not far from mine I leaned toward her and we kissed again.  For a split second we lingered in that magic moment and pulled away slowly looking right into each other’s eyes. 

The moment was broken by Linda’s parents calling for her again.  We hustled up to the house feeling a little like we had something to hide, when in fact we didn’t.  She ran to their car, got a pencil and wrote her address and phone number on a scrap of paper.  As her family’s car drove slowly away down the dirt road she looked out the back window at me as I looked back at her until she was out of sight.    

Linda and I exchanged a letter or two a week for several months.  Once school started that year I was able to call her from a phone booth nearby a few times.  Without physical contact we drifted apart as the months that passed.  Our letters would stop for a while and then we’d start up again. Over time she had other boyfriends and I had other girlfriends, but we kept drifting back to writing each other in between.  Three years from when we first met I got my driver’s license and began to go see her when I could sneak away to make the trip in my little VW.  We got really good at kissing, but never moved past hugging, smooching and holding hands. Our innocence was never spoiled.  The final curtain was when I had to move 200 miles away shortly before my 17th birthday.  I never saw her again and often  have wondered what might have been.     

There has been no sweeter moment in my life than that Sunday in August long ago when I met Linda.  My chest tightens a little and fills up with feeling even today as I think of the experience.  

I do wonder how things turned for her.  I hope she is happy, content and living a good life.  Somewhere I still have a small school picture when she was 14 or 15.  I hope to run across it one day so I can look into those pretty brown eyes again.  

My gratitude is clear, deep and strong for the awakening Linda and I shared.  It is one of my most cherished growing up memories.  The magical innocence of first love comes only once.  I will never forget.       

You know you’re in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.  Dr. Seuss

A Letter To My Son on Father’s Day

/ James Browning / 3 Comments

Dear Nick, 

Vivid in memory are the emotions I experienced just after you were born.  The day after you arrived I wrote in a journal about the joy I felt, the gratefulness within for you being ‘normal” with the proper number of fingers and toes, the awe that filled me for life and the hopes I had for you.  I described your birth as “the most incredible thing I’ve ever witnessed” and also wrote “No child could be more wanted or more loved.”  Those thoughts have aged sweeter as time has clicked by. 

Frequent have been musings of  how I could have been a better Father.  Had I not chased with such vigor the emptiness of dysfunctional illusion, success and money I could have been there for you more.  There were too many of your games I missed,weekend outings that never were and small events at school that were big happenings for you when my presence was missing.  I never did build the treehouse I promised you.

Your Mother and I went our separate ways when you were sixteen which took you hundreds of miles away.  One of my deepest regrets is your high school years when seeing you only every couple of months I became a sideline spectator of your life.  Yet, as I mature and learn I have come to know regrets past making sure you aware of them, have no good purpose.  

There are so many wonderful memories I have of your growing up.  No child has ever been more curious about the world than you.  You never crawled and began to recklessly walk at 7 months old.  Such determination you have always had!  

In school you did well and had the respect of most of your teachers.  You made good friends and some of those relationships are healthy and thriving today.  The only time you ever really got in trouble at school was through protecting a friend from a bully. How the game of hockey worked when you started to play at seven was unknown to me, but no father was ever prouder than I was to watch you.   The lessons that came at you in college were hard ones, but you learned from your mistakes.  I can not begin to express my admiration for your determination and stick-to-it-ness to get the education you wanted.    

On this father’s day I hope these borrowed words express clearly to you the feelings of my heart and the wishes of my soul. 

Until you have a son of your own… You will never know the joy beyond joy, the love beyond feeling that resonates in the heart of a father as he looks upon his son. You will never know the sense of honor that makes a man want to be more than he is and to pass on something good and useful into the hands of his son. And you will never know the heartbreak of the fathers who are haunted by the personal demons that keep them from being the men they want their sons to see. 

We live in a time when it is hard to speak from the heart. Our lives are smothered by a thousand trivialities, and the poetry of our spirits is silenced by the thoughts and cares of daily affairs. 

And so, I want to speak to you honestly. I do not have answers. But I do understand the questions. I see you struggling and discovering and striving upward, and I see myself reflected in your eyes and in your days. In some deep and fundamental way, I have been there and I want to share. 

I, too, have learned to walk, to run, to fall.  I have had a first love. I have known fear and anger and sadness. My heart has been broken and I have known moments when the hand of God seemed to be on my shoulder.  I have wept tears of sorrow and tears of joy. 

There have been times of darkness when I thought I would never see light again, and there have been times when I wanted to dance and sing and hug every person I met. 

I have felt myself emptied into the mystery of the universe, and I have had moments when the smallest slight threw me into rage. 

I have carried others when I barely had the strength to walk myself, and I have left others standing by the road with their hands out stretched for help. 

Sometimes I feel I have done more than anyone can ask; other times I feel I am a charlatan and a failure. I carry within me the spark of greatness and the darkness of heartless crimes. 

In short, I am a man, as are you. 

Although you will walk your own earth and move through your own time, the same sun will rise on you that rose on me, and the same reasons will course across your life as moved across mine. We will always be different, but we will always be the same. 

This is my attempt to give you the lesson of my life, so that you can use them in yours. They are not meant to make you into me. It is my greatest joy to watch you turn into yourself. 

To be your father is the greatest honor I have ever received. It allowed me to touch mystery and to see my love made flesh. If I could but have one wish, it would be for you to pass that love along. 

I love you,

Pops

You are my son-shine.  Author Unknown

Paul McCartney & Carly Simon

/ James Browning / 4 Comments

Browsing the Internet I came across a list of June celebrity birthdays showing Paul McCartney and Carly Simon both celebrate the day of their birth later this month.  On the 18th Paul will turn 69 years of age.  Then a week later on June 25th Carly will turn 66.

Both performers have been favorites of mine since I first became aware of them.  Memory is clear of listening to a cheap small plug-in red plastic radio and hearing the Beatle invasion unfold.  At the time the “in thing” for many was to pick a favorite Beatle.  The girls just loved Paul and being a typical contrarian American male, I said I liked Ringo best.  Picking a favorite at all was opposite to a lot of the boys in the 60’s who pretended to hate the Beatles simply because the girls liked them. I just could not admit to “the guys” at the time that my favorite Beatle was really Paul. 

The Beatles never came close enough to where I lived for me to see them.  I did see Paul and Linda McCartney with Wings in Cincinnati at the old Riverfront Coliseum in the late 70’s.  They had a great band, a string and horn section and backup singers which made for a wonderful concert. About 10 years ago I saw Pual in concert and again about a year ago from the 4th row (thanks P.K.!).  In his 60’s Paul is still a great performer and always seems to be having a great time on stage.  Paul once said “I never look forward, because I have not idea about how any of it happened to getting here.  I’ve no idea how the next five years are going to be.”

Eight years or so after my discovery of McCartney I came into my first contact with Carly Simon’s music in 1971.  That first song ‘The Way I’ve Always Heard It Should Be” was so different that American media did not know what to do with it.  The followup was an album with the title song “Anticipation” which she has said was about her state of mind while waiting for Cat Stevens to arrive for a date.  However, it was Carly’s 3rd album when I became a fan.  It was then the “You’re So Vain” mystery was unleashed.

In a newly-recorded version of “You’re So Vain” a few years ago, Simon whispers roughly two and a half minutes into the tune.  Play it backwards and you’ll hear the first name of the man: “David.”  Carly confirmed the clue in an interview and said “I’m just going to tell you this.  The answer is on the new version of ‘You’re So Vain.’  It’s the answer to the puzzle.” The “David” she is probably referring to is movie and music mogul David Geffen.  While the song was long thought to be about a failed relationship, the new whisper seems to be a hint at Simon’s resentment of Geffen signing then-music rival Joni Mitchell for his own label Asylum Records.

I regret that I have never seen Carly Simon in concert.  She rarely tours.  But I have been consoled by the album covers of many of her LP’s!  She was the subject of quite a bit of young male wishful thinking in the day.  The one that hooked me was “Secrets” where she is proudly walking braless and looking naturally sexy as all get out.  She continued with that sort of LP cover theme consistently over the years, much to my enjoyment. 

I know Paul McCartney is engaged to a wealthy woman named Nancy Shevell from The Hamptons.  I do wish them much happiness.  I hope this union brings Paul a much better life than his second marriage to old what’s her name.  I also know that Carly Simon is single but has a steady boyfriend.  However I do know the two of them know each other since Linda McCartney was one of Carly Simon’s closest friends.  This morning the notion of the two of them married popped into my head and I found it fun to think about.  I imagined them on stage singing to each other:

Paul to Carly: I give her all my love, That’s all I do; And if you saw my love, You’d love her too.

And then Carly to Paul:  Nobody does it better, Makes me feel sad for the rest, Nobody does it half as good as you, Baby, you’re the best.

What a great fantasy concert that could be.  I know thinking of Paul and Carly as a couple is pure craziness and the product of an overactive imagination.  However, I have enjoyed their music and followed their careers and lives to the point that they have been companions on my journey through life.  I am very grateful for the many pleasurable hours listening to their work and simply want both to be happy as the three of us move through the autumn years of our lives.   

No Spring nor Summer Beauty hath such grace
As I have seen in one Autumnal face.
John Donne

Purveyors of Love

/ James Browning

There are probably few men who truly enjoy a good love story more than me.  For movies a few favorites off the top of my head are: Casablanca, Time Traveler’s Wife, Pretty Woman, City of Angels, Before Sunrise, Hope Floats, Sommersby, Notting Hill, and The Lake House.

Love stories unfolded in books I have enjoyed include:  The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks, A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, The Bridges of Madison Country by Robert James Waller, Love Story by Erich Segal and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

Then there are the poets whose delicate weaving of language and love have touched me.  A few of them are Emily Dickenson, Lord Byron, Wendy Cope, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sara Teasdale and William Butler Yeats.

However, there is nothing filmed or published that stirs my soul more than the love story of Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. Barrett received a telegram from an admirer named Robert Browning. He wrote, “I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett…”   This began a secret courtship, conducted primarily in frequent letters back and forth, that was kept from Elizabeth’s wealthy father, who did not approve.  Elizabeth and Robert eloped and were married on September 12, 1846.  As soon as he learned of the wedding, Elizabeth’s father promptly disinherited her.

The marriage was happy and Robert fawned over his wife, encouraging her work and taking care of her. While she never completely recovered from an illness that began in childhood, Elizabeth’s health improved a great deal during the 15 years of their marriage.  On June 29, 1861, Elizabeth Barrett Browning died at the age of 55 in the arms of her husband.  Robert was devastated and for a long time was inconsolable.  He lived another 28 years and never remarried.

There is a two volume set of the letters between Elizabeth and Robert published by their son in 1898.  The majority of  the content of the letters is written about day to day life and people they knew, often in what I would call “old-speak”.  But also contained are expressions of emotion that seem contemporary even today 160+ years after they were written.

Elizabeth to Robert Sept 25 1945:  You have touched me more profoundly than I thought even you could have touched me.  Hence forward I am yours for everything but to do you harm…

Robert to Elizabeth on Oct 30, 1845:  This is my first song, my true song, this love I bear you.  I look into my heart and then let it go forth under that name – love.  I am more than mistrustful of many other feelings in me:  they are not earnest enough; so far true enough.  But this is all the flower of my life which you call forth and which lies at your feet…

Elizabeth to Robert on Nov 27, 1845: You have come to me as a dream comes, as the best of dreams come…

Robert to Elizabeth Dec 20, 1845:  I do not, nor will not think, dearest of ever ‘making you happy’.  I can imagine no way of working that end, which does not go straight to my own truest, only true happiness…

Elizabeth to Robert Jan 9 1846:  If you were to leave me even, to decide that it is best for you to do it, and do it, never should I nor could I regret having known you and loved you…

Robert to ElizabethJan 26, 1846:  My love for you was in the first instance its own reward…

Elizabeth to Robert 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.  It is a literal truth and my future belongs to you.  If it was mine, it was mine to give, and if it was mine to give, it was given…

Robert to ElizabethApril 18, 1846:  I do adore you, more and more, as I live to see more, and feel more… 

Elizabeth to Robert August 26, 1846:   How I wish for two hearts to love you with, and two lives to give to you, and two souls to bear the weight worthily of all you have given to me.  But if one heart and one life will do, they are yours.  I can not give them again…

Today and as I sit here and write it is the gratitude for the purveyors of the sentiments of love that I feel.  When I have doubted if love was real or possible or suffered most from the pain of loving they are the ones who have kept the spark in my heart.  There is much thankfulness within me for the authors, actors, letter writers and poets who have picked me up when I needed it.  It is they who enabled me to keep my belief in love from withering and dying.

What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ready to Love Again

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

I have loved. I have been loved.

I have been hurt. I have hurt others.

I have married. I have divorced.

I have cried over another. I know another cried over me.

I have been happy. I have been unhappy.

I have been alone and lonely. I have been lonely with someone.

I have made mistakes. I have done the right thing.

I have felt joy. I have felt sadness.

I have closed my heart. I have opened my heart.

I want to love again.

Ultimately experience is the only first hand truth possible.  On no subject is that more true than on the subject of love between a man and a woman.  Maybe those who grow up in a “normal” (whatever that is) household and family are presented with good examples of what love between a man and woman is.  Maybe they know how to embrace love and keep it healthy from the environment they grew up in.  That is not the example I had.

Through trial and error, making many mistakes, hurting women and being hurt by them have I learned what I know today.  Each painful experience had good parts to learn from and bad times that often taught me even more.  Love is not fragile within itself, but ill-matched or un-nurtured it becomes weak and easily breakable.

I wrote in a previous post titled “Well Wishes From Youth” https://goodmorninggratitude.com/2011/05/17/wishes-from-youth/  “…People do disappoint each other, love does not always grow and sometimes growth means growing apart.  Such happenings do not have to paint what unfolded as “bad”.  Rather I prefer to think of such occurrences as “Good” that just turn out different than expected…”

What is just below was written by a man who identified himself only as “Steven” when he posted it on justrealm.com on September 21, 2010.  He describes much of my experiences and ends with how I hope to again feel again one day.

Sometimes it takes adverse conditions

For people to reach out to one another.

Sometimes it takes bad luck

For people to understand their goals better.

Sometimes it takes being hurt

For people to be more sensitive to feelings.

Sometimes it takes doubt

For people to trust one another.

Sometimes it takes seclusion

For people to find out who they really are.

Sometimes it takes disillusionment

For people to become informed.

Sometimes it takes feeling nothing

For people to feel everything.

Sometimes it takes our emotions and our feelings to be completely penetrated

For people to open up to love.

I have gone through many of these things

And I now know that

Not only am I ready to

Love you

But I do.

I am grateful to have felt love and to have been loved.  There is within not only gratitude for the joy but also the pain which has often been the superior teacher. I am thankful for the education that experience has taught me in matters of the heart. Now, I am ready to love again.

               Hate leaves ugly scars, love leaves beautiful ones.                 Mignon McLaughlin

Well Wishes From Youth

/ James Browning / 4 Comments

In a special edition of a book titled “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran, on January 25, 1975, my first wedding day, a woman dear to me wrote the following to the one I was marrying:

“…Take care of him, stay with him forever and tell him that you love him every day.  He has been a very special friend to me – a best friend.  He used to make every day a little nicer.  He’s a beautiful, warm person.  I know him well and know he loves you more than anything in his whole life.  And because he loves you – he’ll never let you down…”

Within that copy of Kahlil Gibran’s book the inscription is written in the following passages are found:

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams
as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love…. let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

When young, the fire of living burns brightly as one first experience after another of being an adult unfolds.  It is so easy to take for granted what much later becomes a prized and cherished memory.  In my remembrance there is much gratitude for knowing the woman who wrote the inscription in the book, for the words of the author and especially for the woman who married me and who I spent 20-something years of  my life with.  While we went our separate ways now over a dozen years ago, I will always be thankful for the good years we shared together and the son that came from our union.  The predictions of the well-wisher did not come true as she wrote them.  People do disappoint each other, love does not always grow and sometimes growth means growing apart.  Such happenings do not have to paint what unfolded as “bad”.   Rather I prefer to think of such occurrences as “good” that just turned out different than expected.

With sufficient time, all things change and the evolution of each of us as a person is only partially within our control.  However, my ability to value all my experiences is within my control.  That gratitude allows me to see that nothing lasts forever and teaches me to treasure experiences even more for the fleeting gifts they are.  Each piece of my past is responsible for molding me as I am today.  Just because the prophecy of “till death do us part” becomes untrue does not diminish in any way the value of what “was” for a time.

The years teach much which the days never knew.  Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Invitation

/ James Browning / 1 Comment

I seem to be touched the deepest by works of art in written form, but as soon as I write that I am reminded of how I can at times be visually moved to the point of being overwhelmed.  When what I read is accompanied by an image to match that is when I am penetrated at the deepest levels.   I have profound gratitude for my ability to feel the expressions of “self” that artists and writers have given the world.  My life is far better because of them.  As an example I offer the image above and words you find below here.   I recently sent someone “The Invitation” as an explanation of what I hoped should I be blessed with love coming into my life again.  While no one can likely fit every single idea presented, the ability to be stirred by the words in a meaningful way is a necessary trait for anyone who wishes to knock on the door of my heart.

The Invitation

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’

It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

There was a time in my life I would have thought “The Invitation” to be “pretty” and would have appreciated the art of it, but have gotten no more from it.  I am indebted to the heartache that opened me, the trials that molded me and the growth as a sensing and feeling human being that today allow me not just to see the words of Oriah Mountain Dreamer, but to “feel” them as well.

If you’d like to know more about this poem go here:  http://www.oriahmountaindreamer.com/

Wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving. Kahlil Gibran

A Hapless Romantic

/ James Browning / 2 Comments

  

Often I hear people refer to themselves as a hopeless romantic.  That is either very sad or else they are speaking without paying attention to the meaning of the word hopeless which is defined as “having or offering no hope”.  I am certainly a romantic, but am far from hopeless.  Rather I define myself as a “hapless romantic” (hapness means “not favored by fortune”). 

A heroine of my romantic soul is Elizabeth Barrett who became the wife of Robert Browning in the mid-1800’s.  Some of the passages of her poetry and especially sections of her love letters to Robert during their semi-secret courtship are so very moving to me. Elizabeth had been sickly since her teen years.  Being stuck in her bedroom for days, even weeks,  at a time that served as a catalyst for beginning to write poetry in the first place.  When Robert came along she disbelieved his feelings for her at first.  At around 30 years of age (in those days considered an old maid) she had given up on ever being loved by a man who she in turn loved.  Once she accepted Robert’s feelings as true, the love that flowed from her in words is very beautiful.   Her health improved greatly during their near two decades together.  True love is a great tonic.

So after two failed marriage and lots of heartache, whenever I begin to think I will not love and be loved again I read her words and am inspired.  Hope returns then as does great gratitude for the words she wrote over 160 years ago.  They are so fresh and contemporary the words could have been written not long ago.

August 17, 1846

“… As for happiness – – the words which you use so tenderly are in my heart already, making me happy,… I am happy by you.  Also I may say solemnly, that the greatest proof of love I could give you is to be happy because of you – – and even you cannot judge and see how great a proof that is.  You have lifted my very soul up into the light of your soul, and I am not every likely to mistake it for the common daylight…”

 August 26, 1846 –

“….How I wish for two hearts to love you with, and two lives to give to you, and two souls to bear the weight worthily of all you have given to me.  But if one heart and one life will do… they are yours… I can not give them again…”

  August 27, 1846

“…I thought once that the capacity of happiness was destroyed in me, but you have made it over again… And while you love me so… I will take courage and hope, and believe that such a love may be enough for the happiness of us both…”

 What a beautiful heart Elizabeth Barrett had and her great talent at expressing her feelings of love has, in my opinion, never been bettered.  My thankfulness for her writing is deep.  Also there is much gratitude for her son for publishing the letters she and Robert exchanged.  Thanks Elizabeth for leaving behind the “food” that has helped to nourish and keep my hapless romantic heart alive. 

 Gratitude is the fairest blossom which springs from the soul.  Henry Ward Beecher