Edgar Allan Poe - Letter to Sarah Helen Whitman, 18th October 1848
[...] You do not love me; or you could not have imposed upon me the torture of eight days' silence —of eight days' terrible suspense. You do not love me or, responding to my prayers, you would have cried to me "Edgar, I do." Ah, Helen, the emotion which now consumes me teaches me too well the nature of the impulses of Love! Of what avail to me, in my deadly grief, are your enthusiastic words of mere admiration? Alas; alas! I have been loved, and a relentless Memory contrasts what you say with the unheeded, unvalued language of others. But ah, again, and most especially you do not love me, or you would have felt too thorough a sympathy with the sensitiveness of my nature, to have so wounded me as you have done with this terrible passage of your letter: "How often I have heard men and even women say of you 'He has great intellectual power, but no principle no moral sense.' " Is it possible that such expressions as these could have been repeated to me —to me— by one whom I loved ah, whom I love, by one at whose feet I knelt, I still kneel, in deeper worship than ever man offered to God? And you proceed to ask me why such opinions exist. You will feel remorse for the question, Helen, when I say to you that, until the moment when those horrible words first met my eye, I would not have believed it possible that any such opinions could have existed at all: but that they do exist breaks my heart in separating us forever. I love you too truly ever to have offered you my hand ever to have sought your love had I known my name to be so stained as your expressions imply. Oh God! what shall I say to you Helen, dear Helen? let me call you now by that sweet name, if I may never so call you again. [...]
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