Your love have centred, not on me, with all
My stains and imperfections, but on that

I seemed to be? upon some abstract good
Which still, indeed, would stand, altho' I fell
Beneath it, yet whose shadowy life was not
The life you thought to make companion of
And walk beside for ever? Nearness, then,
Is love itself, and openness is that
Which only makes love possible to men;
And as the more a soul is capable

Of perfect love, so will it see the need
Of perfect openness, and will not fear,

Nay, will rejoice, to keep it, gaining thus

A rock foundation which no floods of chance
Can ever shake, or fortune take away.

So much for this, and now to something else.

Were I of those who talk of Providence

When aught has happened nicely to their minds,

I should most certainly have called that so,

Whate'er it was, which led you to discourse
Upon the disproportion which exists
Between a form and what it signifies ;-

I should have called it Providence, I say,

Because my wish has for a long time been
To open this discussion, yet I found

No means to do so; for my conscience said
That for the end to which I wished it so

The first approach must some way come from you;
Else I might charge myself, perhaps with truth,

With having overborne your feebler will.

Now it has come, the opportunity;

Yet let me say, before I pass to that

Which is the thought now upmost in my mind,

That it is nothing singular to find

The selfsame form embodying ideas

More distant from each other than the light

From darkness. Here is nothing singular,

Or without parallel; material forms

Are of necessity, thro' being so,

Subject to limitation; in ten crimes

That seem alike in outward circumstance

You will not find for two the selfsame cause;

And so with customs,

Where comes in reform

But through the door of some rebellious mind That feels itself unharmonied with that

Which others take and suffer? Not for me,' Saith such a mind, taught by the light of God, 'Are these worn garments, for they fit me not, 'And I am more than they; let me be free, 'Wrongly or rightly,-rightly, as I trust,'To fit my growth with others.' Off the old And on the new! They may be coats of skins, Yet these he would have rather, for in truth He feels that God, who tutored him thus far, Would soonest have him naked, if himself Could bear the sharp ungraduated change. So off the old, while all his fellows shriek, Or rend their clothes, cast dust into the air, Or in some other well-accustomed way

Proclaim his faith and their unfaithfulness.

But time proves all things; proves the scoffer

right,

And that finality is not of God,

But of the dread materializing fiend

Which is God's enemy, and seeks men's souls.

Now to these forms. O Eucharis, you know
That if in aught my purposes are pure,—

Pure in the sense of being undefiled

With meaner motives which hypocrisy

Slurs over and conceals,-they are most pure

In reference to you; and this it is,—

My knowledge that your estimate of me

Will shield me from the pain of misconstruction,--

That prompts me now to answer from my heart.

You doubt, you say, if that can ever be

A marriage in God's sight which pretermits
All but the outward form. Conversely, I

Put to you this,-what sin is there to those

Who pretermit the form and keep the rest?
The question is but abstract; we have not
As yet discerned necessity for us

To blend our outward histories into one ;

Yet would I have you well consider it,
For sake of all the sifting of old truths,
Or what men call so, which you gain thereby;
I leave it to you, adding nothing more.

Adding no more, I said; but I have read
My letter thro' since then, and something more
I find suggested, which I fain would add.

No sin in such a marriage of consent?

What if there be much virtue? What if those

Who, through their faith in God and in themselves,

Casting the world's praise far behind their backs,

Have made their love their church, and God their priest,

Should in the future hear it said to them

'Well done, good servants,' by that voice of years