she has the love, I the interpretation. My writings about them are no fancies, but whispers from themselves. I am deeply taught by the constant presence of any growing thing. This apple-tree before my window I shall mourn to leave. Seeing fruit trees in a garden is entirely another thing from having this one before my eyes constantly, so that I can't help seeing all that happens to it. But I shall write out the history of our acquaintance and give you a copy.”[1]
Yet I must confess to liking her out-door sketches even better when they are more wholly descriptive and less imaginative, as with the following: —
“Oh, it is the loveliest morning. After those days of glad light and calm, benign, roseate sunsets, how sweet the ‘unutterable love’ of such clouds as the west wind has brought; they keep sighing themselves away and letting us see, behind the tenderest blue, the sky of May. The utmost purity with such tenderness! All the fragrance of farewell is breathing out of the earth. The flowers seem to have grown up express for the day. In the wood where I have been they all thronged the path; it is a wood where none but me goes, and they can smile secure. I was looking at the clouds and thinking they could not choose but weep, — there was no other way to express such intense tenderness, — when down came such a sun-shower as you describe from Waldo’s thoughts, the clouds only looking the sweeter and more sunlit all the time for being able to express themselves. All this music is playing upon me almost too fully; I have scarcely
- ↑ MS. (W. H. C.)
