Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis to John S. Dwight Part 14

No art can bring again to me Thy figure's grace, lithe-limbed by sleep; No echo drank the melody An after-festival to keep With me, and memory from that place Glides outward with averted face.

I loved thy beauty as a gleam Of a sweet soul by beauty nursed, But the strange splendor of that dream All other loves and hopes has cursed-- One ray of the serenest star Is dearer than all diamonds are.

Yet would I give my love of thee, If thus of thee I had not dreamed, Nor known that in thine eyes might be What never on my waking gleamed, For Night had then not swept away The possibilities of Day.

For had my love of thee been less, Still of my life thou hadst been queen, And that imperial loveliness Hinted by thee I had not seen; Yet proudly shall that love expire The spark of dawn in morning's fire.

How was it that we loved so well, From love's excess to such sweet woe, Such bitter honey--for will swell Across my grief that visioned glow Which steals the soul of grief away As sunlight soothes a wintry day.

And so we part, who are to each The only one the earth can give.

How vainly words will strive to reach Why we together may not live, When barely thought can learn to know The depth of this sublimest woe.

x.x.xV

CONCORD, _June 29, '46._

My dear Friend,--I had hoped that you would have come to Concord yesterday, because to-morrow early I leave, and shall be here only one day more, towards the close of the next week. I had not expected to have gone so soon, but I shall accompany a sick friend to Saratoga by slow stages, and, returning to Worcester, make a short visit among my kindred there, and then return to Concord to take my final departure. I shall try to secure some day about that time to come to Brook Farm, if only to say farewell to you; but just now I cannot specify the day.

My trip to Monadnock was very beautiful. The minister, Jno. Brown, is the same Brook Farmer in a black coat; and I enjoyed a few days at his house exceedingly. I wrote a long journal while there, and cannot say anything about it here, therefore.

This afternoon I have answered Isaac's letter which I received during the winter. With great modesty I attempted to show him how, in the nature of things, proselyting was hopeless, at least upon any who are really worth converting. But the tone, like my feeling, was friendly and gentle. If it does not change his course towards me, he will better understand my feeling and position, for I told him that in men of his nature and tendency the zeal of proselytism is a part of the fervor of sentiment, and therefore I expected and willingly accepted his exhortations, and only deplored them as a loss of time and misuse of opportunities of communication. The Roman Church was such an unavoidable goal for Isaac that one who knows him well cannot possibly grieve to see him prostrate before the altar, and ought to understand and antic.i.p.ate what was called his arrogance, which is a necessary portion of the sentiment and position.

The review of Mr. Hawthorne's book in the last _Harbinger_ is delicately appreciative. The introductory chapter is one of the softest, clearest pictures I know in literature. His feeling is so deep, and so unexaggerated, that it is a profoundly subtle interpreter of life to him, and the pensiveness which throws such a mellow sombreness upon his imagination is only the pensiveness which is the shadow of extreme beauty.

There is no companion superior to him in genial sympathy with human feeling. He seems to me no less a successful man than Mr. Emerson, although at the opposite end of the village.

For a week or two, if you write, continue to address me at Concord, and believe me, in constant unitary feeling,

Your friend,

G.W.C.

x.x.xVI

CONCORD, _July 14th, '46, Sunday night._

My dear Friend,--I have just returned from Almira's, who sends her love, and will be very happy to see you. I have written Mr. Hawthorne to go to Monadnock with me this week, but I suppose his duties will prevent. If I go I shall probably return before Sunday, as that is John Brown's working day, and we shall stay with him.

The night was glorious as I came from Almira's. The late summer twilight held the stars at bay; and in the meadows the fire-flies were flitting everywhere. Suddenly in the north, directly before me, began the flas.h.i.+ngs of the aurora--piles of splendor, a celestial colonnade to the invisible palace. It is a fitting close for a day so soft and beautiful. We took a long sauntering walk this morning and found the mountain laurel, which is very rare here.

I have been busy all my afternoons reading Roman history. Niebuhr and Arnold are fine historians. They are such wise, sincere men and scholars.

I sit at the western door of the barn, looking across a meadow and rye-field to a group of pines beyond. My eye fixes upon some point in the landscape which constantly grows more beautiful, winning my eyes from the rest, until they gradually slide along, finding each as pleasant until the whole has a separate and individual beauty like a fall whose expressions you know intimately. It is a "Summer of Summers," as Lizzie Curzon writes me, and I am glad that my last hours in my own country will be so consecrated by beauty in my memory.

Burrill goes again to the Hudson to see Mr. Downing on Thursday. He will remain a week, I suppose, and go again to New York in August, when I sail.

Let me have my answer in person, for so short and poor a letter does not deserve the exclusive attention of writing.

Remember me kindly to all at Brook Farm, to Wm. Channing particularly, if he is there.

Your friend ever,

G.W.C.

x.x.xVII

CONCORD, _July 13th, 1846._

My dear Friend,--It is a miserable piece of business to say my farewell to this blank sheet and send it to you, instead of having you say good-bye to my blank face. But, unless you can come to Ida's on Wednesday or Thursday, it must be so. A sudden trip to Saratoga has deranged my plans.

Will you now send my copy of the _Harbinger_ to Almira?

We have been too happy together in times past and mean to be so so much more, here or somewhere, that we will not be very serious in our farewells, for we have been as far apart since I left you as we shall be when you are at Brook Farm and I at Palmyra. So good-bye, whether for two or three years, or an indefinite period. When we see each other again we shall _meet_, for our friends.h.i.+p has been of a fine gold which the moth and rust of years cannot corrupt.

Will you give my love and say good-bye to Mr. and Mrs. Ripley and my other friends with you? and remember, as he deserves,

Your friend,

G.W.C.

x.x.xVIII

MILTON HILL, _Midnight, July 16, '46._

My dear Friend,--I could not come this evening, and shall only have time in the morning to go to Boston and take the cars; so we must part so. I will copy some of my verses for you if I can steal the time, and write you from Europe if David Jones permits me to arrive.

I must say good-bye and good-night in some lines of Burns's which haunt me at this time, though they have no appropriateness; but they have a speechless woe of farewell, like a wailing wind:

"Had we never loved sae kindly, Had we never loved sae blindly, Never met or never parted, We had never been broken hearted."

Yr friend

G.W.C.

I shall write you again. Will you give this to Jno. Cheever? I have no wafer.

x.x.xIX

FORT HAMILTON, LONG ISLAND, _July 30, '46._

My dear Friend,--It is very shabby, but I have been so unexpectedly and constantly separated from my ma.n.u.scripts that I cannot copy, as I hoped, some of my verses. I have but one more day on land, and more than I can well do in it.

Could you hear how the sea moans and roars in the moonlight at this moment, it would be a siren song to draw you far away. I strain my eyes over the water as one struggles to comprehend the end of life, but the beauty of the future lies unseen and untouched.

G.o.d bless you always, my dear Friend; and do not fail to write me often.