William, my teacher, my friend ! dear William and dear Dorothea ! Smooth out the folds of my letter, and place it on desk or on table ; Place it on table or desk ; and your right hands loosely half-closing, Gently sustain them in air, and extending the digit didactic, Rest it a moment on each of the forks of the five-forkйd left hand, Twice on the breadth of the thumb, and once on the tip of each finger ; Read with a nod of the head in a humouring recitativo ; And, as I live, you will see my hexameters hopping before you. This is a galloping measure ; a hop, and a trot, and a gallop !
All my hexameters fly, like stags pursued by the staghounds, Breathless and panting, and ready to drop, yet flying still onwards, I would full fain pull in my hard-mouthed runaway hunter ; But our English Spondeans are clumsy yet impotent curb-reins ; And so to make him go slowly, no way left have I but to lame him.
William, my head and my heart ! dear Poet that feelest and thinkest ! Dorothy, eager of soul, my most affectionate sister ! Many a mile, O ! many a wearisome mile are ye distant, Long, long, comfortless roads, with no one eye that doth know us. O ! it is all too far to send to you mockeries idle : Yea, and I feel it not right ! But O ! my friends, my belovйd ! Feverish and wakeful I lie,--I am weary of feeling and thinking. Every thought is worn down,--I am weary, yet cannot be vacant. Five long hours have I tossed, rheumatic heats, dry and flushing, Gnawing behind in my head, and wandering and throbbing about me, Busy and tiresome, my friends, as the beat of the boding night-spider.
I forget the beginning of the line :
[Image][Image][Image][Image][Image] ... my eyes are a burthen, Now unwillingly closed, now open and aching with darkness. O ! what a life is the eye ! what a strange and inscrutable essence ! Him that is utterly blind, nor glimpses the fire that warms him ; Him that never beheld the swelling breast of his mother ; Him that smiled in his gladness as a babe that smiles in its slumber ; Even for him it exists, it moves and stirs in its prison ; Lives with a separate life, and `Is it a Spirit ?' he murmurs : `Sure, it has thoughts of its own, and to see is only a language.'
There was a great deal more, which I have forgotten. ... The last line which I wrote, I remember, and write it for the truth of the sentiment, scarcely less true in company than in pain and solitude :--
William, my head and my heart ! dear William and dear Dorothea ! You have all in each other ; but I am lonely, and want you !