Page:Poems - volume 1 - EBBrowning (1844).pdf/15



When your eyes fell upon this page of dedication, and you start to see to whom it is inscribed, your first thought will be of the time far off when I was a child and wrote verses, and when I dedicated them to you who were my public and my critic. Of all that such a recollection implies of saddest and sweetest to both of us, it would become neither of us to speak before the world: nor would it be possible for us to speak of it to one another, with voices that did not falter. Enough, that what is in my heart when I write thus, will be fully known to yours.

And my desire is that you, who are a witness how if this art of poetry had been a less earnest object to me, it must have fallen from exhausted hands before this day—that you, who have shared with me in things bitter and sweet, softening or enhancing them, every day—that you, who hold with me over all sense of loss and transiency, one hope by one Name,—may accept from