May it be so with us all, with you and with me, my ever and very dear friend!  In the meantime do not forget me.  I never can forget you.

Your affectionate and grateful
ELIZABETH B. BARRETT.

Arabel desires her love to be offered to you.

To H.S.  Boyd 1 Beacon Terrace, Torquay:  July 8, 1840.

My ever dear Friend,—­I must write to you, although it is so very long, or at least seems so, since you wrote to me.  But you say to Arabel in speaking of me that I ‘used to care for what is poetical;’ therefore, perhaps you say to yourself sometimes that I used to care for you!  I am anxious to vindicate my identity to you, in that respect above all.

It is a long, dreary time since I wrote to you.  I admit the pause on my own part, while I charge you with another.  But your silence has embraced more pleasantness and less suffering to you than mine has to me, and I thank God for a prosperity in which my unchangeable regard for you causes me to share directly....

I have not rallied this summer as soon and well as I did last.  I was very ill early in April at the time of our becoming conscious to our great affliction—­so ill as to believe it utterly improbable, speaking humanly, that I ever should be any better.  I am, however, a very great deal better, and gain strength by sensible degrees, however slowly, and do hope for the best—­’the best’ meaning one sight more of London.  In the meantime I have not yet been able to leave my bed.

To prove to you that I who ‘used to care’ for poetry do so still, and that I have not been absolutely idle lately, an ‘Athenaeum’ shall be sent to you containing a poem on the subject of the removal of Napoleon’s ashes.[54] It is a fitter subject for you than for me.  Napoleon is no idol of mine.  I never made a ‘setting sun’ of him.  But my physician suggested the subject as a noble one and then there was something suggestive in the consideration that the ‘Bellerophon’ lay on those very bay-waters opposite to my bed.

Another poem (which you won’t like, I dare say) is called ’The Lay of the Rose,’[55] and appeared lately in a magazine.  Arabel is going to write it out for you, she desires me to tell you with her best love.  Indeed, I have written lately (as far as manuscript goes) a good deal, only on all sorts of subjects and in as many shapes.

Lazarus would make a fine poem, wouldn’t he?  I lie here, weaving a great many schemes.  I am seldom at a loss for thread.

Do write sometimes to me, and tell me if you do anything besides hearing the clocks strike and bells ring.  My beloved papa is with me still.  There are so many mercies close around me (and his presence is far from the least), that God’s Being seems proved to me, demonstrated to me, by His manifested love.  May His blessing in the full lovingness rest upon you always!  Never fancy I can forget or think of you coldly.