Letter 29 – To a woman

Your eyes I love, my own I hate; for, whereas in yours I recognize a great intelligence, in mine I recognize a wondrous meddlesomeness. They are shameless, yes, they are unable to hide anything of what they have once seen. So they cease not to say to my heart, “Did you not see the woman with the lovely hair, the woman with the comely countenance? Come, stand up and speak; yes, write and weep and beg.” And my heart ever so readily yields – yields because it cannot disobey its greedy satellites; for even against its will they drag it forth and compel it to share to the full opinions to which they have already given their own assent. Doubtless, before Love alighted on earth, the heart knew the sun's beauty and no other, and this beauty was its spectacle and marvel; but after tasting human beauty it fell away from that zealous worship, and was reduced to bitter servitude, whose tasks are waiting outside doors, and sleeping on the ground, and defiance of heat and cold, and the fight, “your life or mine,” against one's rival. For all these sufferings you are the cure, if you will but accept, in return for a momentary service, works that cannot die, and, in return for a brief physical satisfaction, a remembrance that never grows old; for what you will give is something that every woman has and can give easily, and what you will gain in return is great beyond the power of my words to tell: affection, remembrance, and night – these three, from which a mother and father too are made.