Instead of a Letter by Diana Athill

Author:Diana Athill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 1962-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

Give all to love;

Obey thy heart;

Friends, kindred, days,

Estate, good fame,

Plans, credit, and the Muse—

Nothing refuse

’Tis a brave master;

Let it have scope:

Follow it utterly….

Oh, darling Paul! What a terrible poem to choose and what a splendid message to send! And when I reached the last three lines, miserable though I was, laughter won:

Heartily know,

When half-gods go

The gods arrive.

Whatever Emerson may have intended by that, I had a pretty clear idea of what Paul meant. ‘Oh my love,’ I thought, ‘what a conceited old thing you are.’

The comfort that letter gave, the gratitude and affection with which it filled me, were the most adult of all the love-feelings I had yet experienced for Paul. It was at the end of that term that I spent three nights with him in accommodating lodgings which he had discovered when he himself was up at Oxford, and it was during the next vacation that we became engaged.

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