[00:01.43]Shelly to Elizabeth Hitchener
[00:03.94]Your letter of the 1st hath this moment reached me.
[00:08.43]I answer it according to our agreement,
[00:11.06] which shall be inviolable.
[00:13.35]Truly did you say that, at our arising in the morning,
[00:16.52]nature assumes a different aspect.
[00:19.25]Who could have conjectured the circumstances of my last letter?
[00:23.09]Friend of my soul, this is terrible, dismaying:
[00:27.46]it makes one's heart sink, it withers vital energy...
[00:31.40]Dear being, I am thine again;
[00:34.79] thy happiness shall again
[00:36.01]predominate over this fleeting tribute to self-interest.
[00:40.16]Yet who would not feel now?
[00:42.24]Oh'twere as reckless a task to endeavour
[00:45.09]to annihilate perception while sense existed,
[00:48.38] as to blunt the sixth sense to such impressions as these!—
[00:52.65]forgive me, dearest friend! I pour out my whole soul to you.
[00:57.24] I write by fleeting intervals:
[00:59.54]my pen runs away with my senses.
[01:02.05] The impassionateness of my sensations grows upon me.
[01:05.44] Your letter, too, has much affected me.
[01:08.51]Never, with my consent,
[01:10.37]shall that intercourse cease
[01:11.98] which has been the day-dawn of my existence, the sun
[01:15.16]which has shed warmth
[01:16.58] on the cold drear length of the anticipated prospect of life.
[01:20.52]Prejudice might demand the sacrifice,
[01:23.14]but she is an idol to whom we bow not.
[01:26.21] The world might demand it; its opinion might require;
[01:30.25]but the cloud which flees over young mountain were
[01:33.09] as important to our happiness, to our usefulness.
[01:36.71]This must never be, never whilst this existence continues;
[01:41.95] and when Time has enrolled us in the list of the departed,
[01:45.56] surely this friendship will survive to bear our identity to heaven.
[01:50.05] What is love, or friendship? Is it something material—a ball,
[01:55.76] an apple, a plaything—
[01:57.95]which must be taken from one to be given to another?
[02:01.01] Is it capable of no extension, no communication?
[02:05.06] Lord Kaimes defines love to a particularization of the general passion.
[02:09.87]But this is the love of sensation, of sentiment——
[02:13.26]the absurdest of absurd vanities:
[02:16.11] it is the love of pleasure, not the love of happiness.
[02:20.04]The one is a love which is self-centered, self-devoted,
[02:24.20]self-interested: It desires its own interest;
[02:27.70]it is the parent of jealousy.
[02:30.10]Its object is the plaything which it desires to monopolize.
[02:33.93]Selfishness, monopoly, is its very soul,
[02:38.31]and to communicate to others part of this love were to destroy its essence,
[02:42.46] to annihilate this chain of straw.
[02:44.76] But love, the love which we worship,—
[02:48.05]virtue, heaven, disinterestedness—
[02:51.44]in a word, Friendship—
[02:53.29]which has as much to do with the senses as with yonder mountains;
[02:56.90] that which seeks the good of all—
[02:59.20]the good of its object first,
[03:01.06]not because that object is a minister to its pleasures,
[03:04.67] not merely because it even contributes to its happiness,
[03:08.27]but because it is really worthy,
[03:10.79]because it has powers, sensibilities, is capable of abstracting itself,
[03:16.59] and loving virtue for virtue's own loveliness—
[03:19.87]desiring the happiness of others
[03:22.05] not from the obligation of fearing hell or desiring heaven:
[03:25.88] but for pure, simple, unsophisticated virtue.
[03:30.69]You will soon hear again.
[03:32.67] Adieu, my dearest friend.
[03:35.18]Continue to believe that
[03:36.82]when I am insensible to your excellence,
[03:39.33]I shall cease to exist.
[03:41.52]Yours most sincerely, inviolably, eternally
[03:46.01]Percy S.
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