LETTERS from James & Orpha: contents

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Postmarked Tuesday 6.29.26, from Orpha in Glens Falls NY

Before the altar of the Beauty you have shown me, now, in the past, and forever — I bow trembling, speechless, pressing my throbbing heart with clutching hands, holding there the impassioned cry to you until the days have passed when I must seek in vain empty words, the fit reply —

Guarding in my bosom all that now is yours, soothing, yet strengthening its passion and its wanting with the promise of a forest of silver swaying flowers slowly changing to burnished gold as the red living flame grows, having chosen Beauty, and Beauty alone — fearing not the price —

For I have heard the warning of a mocking world to "Dream on if you will, but grief is under the dream, as the rock is under the rushing stream, that having dared the starry goal, there is now, having taken the road, but to pay the toll" — and I have answered, as did the Sea Queen of old, "I hear you, oh world. I accept the pain, for the grief of the heart is a mystic gain! I will love and suffer and build me a soul — I have chosen the road to the deathless goal." And to you —

Thine, thine, all thine
In the dream divine
While rivers yearn to find the sea,
While great stars burn eternally.

Orpha

NOTES

There is no clue -- or should I say, I am clueless -- about the source of her quotes.

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