For years your name never passed my lips, while my soul drank in, with a delirious thirst, all that was uttered in my presence respecting you.
Interpretation
The quote expresses deep admiration and longing for someone who was not openly acknowledged.
In this poignant declaration, the speaker conveys the intense emotional impact that a person has had on their life, even when not spoken of directly. The imagery of the soul drinking in words about the beloved suggests an insatiable desire for connection, indicating that true feelings often dwell beneath the surface, longing to be recognized.
In practice
In a romantic letter to express feelings for someone special.
But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.
Most writers - poets in especial - prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy - an ecstatic intuition - and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes.
...the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long and final scream of despair.
Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best have gone to their eternal rest.
I could have clasped the red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said, "any death but that of the pit!" Fool! might I have not known that into the pit it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?
In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselves upon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember.
Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.
What is love except another name for the use of positive reinforcement? Or vice versa.
This time is difficult. Wait for me. We will live it out vividly. Give me your small hand: we will rise and suffer, we will feel, we will rejoice. We are once more the pair who lived in bristling places, in harsh nests in the rock. This time is difficult. Wait for me with a basket, with a shovel, with your shoes and your clothes. Now we need each other, not only for the carnations' sake, not only to look for honey β we need our hands to wash with, to make fire.
I will not be sworn but love may transform me to an oyster
I would step in the way of a bullet if it were aimed at my husband. It is not self-sacrifice to die protecting that which you value: If the value is great enough, you do not care to exist without it.
How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present? You can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you glimpse a future where the beloved is no more.
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