[Postmark: June 22, 1846]
Sunday.
What I told you yesterday is very often in my thoughts,
my own Ba – that with respect to the love for you ‘ I see
what I know and testify what I have seen.’ I know what is,
and why it is – so far as my faculties of perception allow, of
course I rest on you just as I sate on the grass in the
garden this morning with the very earth’s immensity beneath :
that is very different from trusting to this chair which is firm
enough now, but might break down from a thousand causes.
How entirely I believe in you, Ba ! When you praise me,
I believe that you are in error, yet believe it none –– I know
I am not so truthful to you – not so invariably, in the least
as in the greatest matters – in the greatest, in the ordinary
even, I speak pure truth, – but the old conventional habits
cling, as I find out on reflection sometimes – but I aspire no
less to become altogether open to your sight as you are to
me, – I in my degree, – like a smallest of lake’s face under
the sky’s : and for this also I shall have to bless you, my only
Ba, – my only Ba !
I ought never . . I think I will not again . . attempt to
write down why I love you . . (not, NOT that it is done here,
but alluded-to, touched upon . .) The elements of the
love . . (I say ‘ the ‘ love, mine, because I will not know, nor
hear, nor be taught anything by anybody else about ‘ love,’
the one love everybody knows, it seems, and lives and dies
by) – my love’s elements are so many that the attempt to
describe them is to bring about this failure . . the first that
comes is taken up and treated of at length . . as that element
of ‘ trust’ just now . . and then, in the feeling of incompet-
ence which makes the pen sink away and turns the mind
off, the others are let pass by unnamed, much less
described, or at least acknowledged for the undeniable
elements they are. What were all the trust without –
and thus I could begin again ! Let me say no more now –
and forgive all the foolishness . . it is not for my wisdom
you are to love me, Ba ! Except that if you agreed too
heartily with me on that point, I should very likely be found
turning round on you with ‘ not wise, when I adore you so ? ‘
Wise or unwise, I do adore you, my Ba ! And more and
evermore ! But see how I need your letters to train mine,
to lead them into something more like the true way . . and
to-morrow the letter will come – will it not ? And mine shall
be less about myself and more about you – whom may God
bless, prays your own
R.