Dearest: I cannot say I have seen Pisa, for the majority had
their way, and we simply skipped into it, got ourselves bumped down at
the Duomo and Campo Santo for two hours, fell exhausted to bed, and
skipped out again by the first train next morning. Over the walls of the
Campo Santo are some divine crumbs of Benozzo Gozzoli (don't expect me
ever to spell the names of dead painters correctly: it is a politeness
one owes to the living, but the famous dead are exalted by being spelt
phonetically as the heart dictates, and become all the better company
for that greatest of unspelled and spread-about names--Shakspere,
Shakspeare, Shakespeare--his mark, not himself). Such a long parenthesis
requires stepping-stones to carry you over it: "crumbs" was the last
(wasn't a whole loaf of bread a stepping-stone in one of Andersen's
fairy-tales?): but, indeed, I hadn't time to digest them properly. Let
me come back to them before I die, and bury me in that inclosure if you
love me as much then as I think you do now.

The Baptistry has a roof of echoes that is wonderful,--a mirror of sound
hung over the head of an official who opens his mouth for centimes to
drop there. You sing notes up into it (or rather you don't, for that is
his perquisite), and they fly circling, and flock, and become a single
chord stretching two octaves: till you feel that you are living inside
what in the days of our youth would have been called "the sound of a
grand Amen."

The cathedral has fine points, or more than points--aspects: but the
Italian version of Gothic, with its bands of flat marbles instead of
moldings, was a shock to me at first. I only begin to understand it now
that I have seen the outside of the Duomo at Florence. Curiously enough,
it doesn't strike me as in the least Christian, only civic and splendid,
reminding me of what Ruskin says about church architecture being really
a dependant on the feudal or domestic. The Strozzi Palace is a beautiful
piece of street-architecture; its effect is of an iron hand which gives
you a buffet in the face when you look up and wonder--how shall I climb
in? I will tell you more about insides when I write next.

I fear my last letter to you from Lucerne may either have strayed, or not
even have begun straying: for in the hurry of coming away I left it,
addressed, I _think_, but unstamped; and I am not sure that that
particular hotel will be Christian enough to spare the postage out of the
bill, which had a galaxy of small extras running into centimes, and
suggesting a red-tape rectitude that would not show blind
twenty-five-centime gratitude to the backs of departed guests. So be
patient and forgiving if I seem to have written little. I found two of
yours waiting for me, and cannot choose between them which I find most
dear. I will say, for a fancy, the shorter, that you may ever be
encouraged to write your shortest rather than none at all. One word from
you gives me almost as much pleasure as twenty, for it contains all your
sincerity and truth; and what more do I want? Yon bless me quite. How many
perfectly happy days I owe to you, and seldom dare dream that I have made
any beginning of a return! If I could take one unhappy day out of your
life, dearest, the secret would be mine, and no such thing should be left
in it. Be happy, beloved! oh, happy, happy,--with me for a partial
reason--that is what I wish!

Oh, wings of the morning, here you come! I have been looking out for you
ever since post came. Roberts is carrying orders into town, and will bring
you this with a touch of the hat and an amused grin under it. I saw you
right on the top Sallis Hill: this is to wager that my eyes have told me
correctly. Look out for me from far away, I am at my corner window: wave
to me! Dearest, this is to kiss you before I can.

My Own Beloved: And I never thanked you yesterday for your dear words
about the resurrection pie; that comes of quarreling! Well, you must prove
them and come quickly that I may see this restoration of health and
spirits that you assure me of. You avoid saying that they sent you to
sleep; but I suppose that is what you mean.

Fate meant me only to light upon gay things this morning: listen to this
and guess where it comes from:

    "When March with variant winds was past,
     And April had with her silver showers
     Ta'en leif at life with an orient blast;
     And lusty May, that mother of flowers,
     Had made the birds to begin their hours,
     Among the odours ruddy and white,
     Whose harmony was the ear's delight:

    "In bed at morrow I sleeping lay;
     Methought Aurora, with crystal een,
     In at the window looked by day,
     And gave me her visage pale and green;
     And on her hand sang a lark from the splene,
     'Awake ye lovers from slumbering!
     See how the lusty morrow doth spring!'"

Ah, but you are no scholar of the things in your own tongue! That is
Dunbar, a Scots poet contemporary of Henry VII., just a little bit
altered by me to make him soundable to your ears. If I had not had to
leave an archaic word here and there, would you ever have guessed he lay
outside this century? That shows the permanent element in all good
poetry, and in all good joy in things also. In the four centuries since
that was written we have only succeeded in worsening the meaning of
certain words, as for instance "spleen," which now means irritation and
vexation, but stood then for quite the opposite--what we should call, I
suppose, "a full heart." It is what I am always saying--a good digestion
is the root of nearly all the good living and high thinking we are
capable of: and the spleen was then the root of the happy emotions as it
is now of the miserable ones. Your pre-Reformation lark sang from "a
full stomach," and thanked God it had a constitution to carry it off
without affectation: and your nineteenth century lark applying the same
code of life, his plain-song is mere happy everyday prose, and not
poetry at all as we try to make it out to be.

I have no news for you at all of anyone: all inside the house is a
simmer of peace and quiet, with blinds drawn down against the heat the
whole day long. No callers; and as for me, I never call elsewhere. The
gossips about here eke out a precarious existence by washing each
other's dirty linen in public: and the process never seems to result in
any satisfactory cleansing.

I avoid saying what news I trust to-morrow's post-bag may contain for
me. Every wish I send you comes "from the spleen," which means I am very
healthy, and, conditionally, as happy as is good for me. Pray God bless
my dear Share of the world, and make him get well for his own and my
sake! Amen.

This catches the noon post, an event which always shows I am jubilant,
with a lot of the opposite to a "little death" feeling running over my
nerves. I feel the grass growing _under_ me: the reverse of poor Keats'
complaint. Good-by, Beloved, till I find my way into the provender of
to-morrow's post-bag.