Lines to R. L
That which we are and shall be is made upOf what we have been. On the autumn leafThe crimson stains bear witness of its spring;And, on its perfect nodes, the ocean shellNotches the slow, strange changes of its growth.Ourselves are our own records; if we lookedRightly into that blotted crimson pageWithin our bosoms, then there were no needTo chronicle our stories; for the heartHath, like the earth, its strata, and containsIts past within its present. Well for us,And our most cherished secrets, that withinThe round of being few there are who readBeneath the surface. Else our very forms,The merest gesture of our hands, might tellMuch we would hide forever. Know you notThose eyes, in whose dark heaven I have gazedMore curiously than on my favorite stars,Are deeper for such griefs as they have seen,And brighter for the fancies they have shrined,And sweeter for the loves which they have talked?Oh! that I had the power to read their smiles,Or sound the depth of all their glorious gloom.So should I learn your history from its birth,Through all its glad and grave experiences,Better than if—(your journal in my hand,Written as only women write, with allA woman’s shades and shapes of feeling, tracedAs with the fine touch of a needle’s point)—I followed you from that bright hour when firstI saw you in the garden ‘mid the flowers,To that wherein a letter from your handMade me all rich with the dear name of friend.