Prometheus Bound, and other poems/Sonnets from the Portuguese/Sonnet 28

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

XXVIII.

My letters! all dead paper, . . mute and white!—
And yet they seem alive and quivering
Against my tremulous hands, which loose the string
And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
This said, . . he wished to have me in his sight
Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
To come and touch my hand . . . a simple thing,
Yet I wept for it!—this, . . the paper's light . .
Said, Dear, I love thee: and I sank and quailed
As if God's future thundered on my past:
This said, I am thine—and so its ink has paled
With lying at my heart that beat too fast:
And this . . . O Love, thy words have ill availed,
If, what this said, I dared repeat at last!