I had fallen in love at first sight, it is
true; not therefore was I eager to meet my lover. I was only more than
willing to see him. It was as sweet, or nearly as sweet, to dream of his
coming, as to have him before me--so long as I knew he was indeed coming.
I was just a little anxious lest I should not find him altogether so
beautiful as I was imagining him. That he was good, I never doubted:
could I otherwise have fallen in love with him? And his letter was so
straightforward--so manly!
The afternoon was cloudy, and the twilight came the sooner. From the
realms of the dark, where all the birds of night build their nests,
lining them with their own sooty down, the sweet odorous filmy dusk of
the summer, haunted with wings of noiseless bats, began at length to come
flickering earthward, in a snow infinitesimal of fluffiest gray and
black: I crept out into the garden. It was dark as wintry night among
the yews, but I could have gone any time through every alley of them
blind-folded. An owl cried and I started, for my soul was sunk in its own
love-dawn. There came a sudden sense of light as I opened the door into
the wilderness, but light how thin and pale, and how full of expectation!
The earth and the vast air, up to the great vault, seemed to throb and
heave with life--or was it that my spirit lay an open thoroughfare to
the life of the All? With the scent of the roses and the humbler
sweet-odoured inhabitants of the wilderness; with the sound of the brook
that ran through it, flowing from the heath and down the hill; with the
silent starbeams, and the insects that make all the little noises they
can; with the thoughts that went out of me, and returned possessed of the
earth;--with all these, and the sense of thought eternal, the universe
was full as it could hold.
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