Love Letter: Robert Browning to Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett,and this is no off-hand complimentary letter that I shall write,
no prompt matter-of-course recognition of your genius and there a graceful and natural end of the thing:
When I first read your poems, I quite laugh to remember how I have been turning and turning again
in my mind what I should be able to tell you of their effect upon me-for in the first flush of delight
I thought I would this once get out of my habit of purely passive enjoyment. When I do really enjoy,
and thoroughly justify my admiration-perhaps even, as a loyal fellow-craftsman should,
try and find fault and do you some little good to be proud of hereafter-but nothing comes of it.

When the heart is full it may run over, but the real fullness stays within.
You asked me yesterday "if I should repent?" Yes, I could with all the past were to do over again,
that in it I might somewhat more, never so little more, conform in the outward homage, to the inward feeling.
 What I have professed, seems to fall short of what my first love required even, and when I think of this moment's love
I could repent, as I say.

Words can never tell you, however, form them, transform them anyway, how perfectly dear you are to me,
perfectly dear to my heart and soul.
I look back, and in every one point, every word and gesture, every letter, every silence,
you have been entirely perfect to me. I would not change one word. One look.
My hope and aim are to preserve this love. Not to fall from it.

Enough now, my dearest. You have given me the highest, completest proof of love that ever one human being gave another.
I am all gratitude, and all pride. All pride that my life has been so crowned by you.
Would I, if I could, supplant one of any of the affections that I know to have taken root in you
that great and solemn one, for instance. I feel that if I could get myself remade, as if turned to gold,
I would not even then desire to become more than the mere setting to that diamond you must always wear.

The regard and esteem you now give me, in this letter, and which I press to my heart and bow my head upon,
is all I can take and using all my gratitude.

Your very own R.