on Cynthia's cheek
that the poet described as "rose leaves floating in the purest milk"? And
was it not Keats (or who was it?) who vowed he could "die of a rose in
aromatic pain"? I could write an anthology on Jessica Blushing; indeed I
could hardly otherwise be so pleasantly and virtuously employed as in
going through the poets and bringing together all that they have said in
prophecy of your many divine properties.

Meanwhile you have turned me into a poet myself--think of that!--me, for
these dozen years a musty, cobwebbed groper in philosophies and religions!
I have been sitting here by my fire for hours, smoking and dreaming and
rhyming, rhyming and dreaming and smoking; and pretty soon the rumble of
the first milk-waggons will come up from the street, and with that prosaic
summons I shall go to bed when thrifty folk are beginning to yawn under
the covers and think of the day's work.

I wonder sometimes if my inveterate pedantries do not amuse or, worse yet,
bore you. I am grown so used to books and the language of books. I believe
when Gabriel blows his trump I shall start up from my long slumber with a
Latin quotation on my lips--_At tuba terribili_, like as not. (Query: Does
Gabriel understand Latin, or is Hebrew your only celestial speech?)

I am trying to be facetious, but really the matter worries me a little.
Have you been laughing at me because I scolded you for neglecting your
Latin, and because I took a copy of Catullus in my pocket when we made our
Sunday excursion into the woods? Yet it was all so sweet to me. In the air
hovered the first premonitions of spring, and the sunlight poured down
upon the earth like an intoxicating wine that has been chilled in the
cellar but is golden yellow with the glow of an inner fire. And some day I
must set up an inscription on that Merlin oak over the nook where we sat
together and talked and read, and ceased from words when sweeter language
was required. As you leaned back against the warm, dry leaves I had piled
up, with your great cloak twisted about your body--all except your feet,
that would creep out into the sun, tantalising me with a thousand
forbidden thoughts--I understood how the old Greeks dreamed of dryads,
fairer than mortal women, who haunted the forests. It pains me almost to
think of that hour; I cannot fathom the meaning of so much beauty; a dumb
fear comes upon me lest you should fade from my life like an aerial vision
and leave me unsatisfied. Ye