I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett... this great living poetry of yours, not a flower of which but took root and grew - Oh, how different that is from lying to be dried and pressed flat, and prized highly, and put in a book with a proper account at top and bottom, and shut up and put away... I do, as I say, love these books with all my heart - and i love you too. Do you know i was once not very far from seeing - really seeing you? Mr Kenyon said to me one morning, "Would you like to see Miss Barrett?" Then he went to announce me - then he returned ... you were too unwell, and now it is years ago, and i feel as at some untoward passage in my travels, as if i had been close, so close, to some world's-wonder in chapel or crypt, only a screen to push and i might have entered, but there was some slight, so it now seems, slight and just sufficient bar to admission, and the half-opened door shut, and i went home my thousands of miles, and the sight was never to be.
Well, these poems were to be, and this true thankful joy and prode with which i feel myself,
Yours ever faithfully,
Robert Browning
