by: The centuries may pass but love and passion remain the same. I fully confess the romantic in me but I believe that people still write like this.... with a gut-wrenching reflection of what's in their heart. Consider the soldier in Iraq and his love back home. Or, perhaps the recorded thoughts and feelings sent to a first love...
Hard to imagine desperately waiting on a letter... in this day and age of instant information. Hard to imagine running off to a quiet place only to read and let the strands of passion-enriched sentences wrap themselves around you. Here, try to imagine it...
ALL my soul follows you, love~ encircles you ~ and I live in being yours. I have now taken of the kernel of your life and planted it in mine.
{Margaret Fuller, American writer and critic, to James Nathan, April 22nd, 1845}
... I kiss your letter. I am sure the poor paper smarts for my Idolatry, which be wearing it continually near my breast will at last be burnt and martyred in those flames of adoration it hath kindled in me.
{John Dryden, English poet, critic and dramatist, to Honor Dryden, May 1653 or 1655}
I am writing to you on Sunday evening, which is the time I like to write to you best, because I feel the quietest and descend the most into my real self, where my love is strongest and deepest. So you know I always have a fancy at such times that our loves makes us somehow alone together in the world. We seem to have a deep life together apart from all other people on earth, and which we cannot show, explain or impart to them. At least my affection seems to isolate me in the deepest moments from all others, and it makes me speak with my whole heart and soul to you and you only. And perhaps this isolation is one reason why deep love makes one feel~ at least in some moments~ so religious.
{Walter Bagehot, English economist and journalist, to Eliza Wilson, his future wife, January 17th, 1858. Their marriage was long and harmonious}
Letters taken from the book Love Letters, an anthology of passion
Talk to me. What do you think? Valentines Day is just a few weeks away. Take up your pen cause letters like these, do not get thrown away!
