The picture of helpless indolence she calls herself sublimely helpless and impotent I had done living I thought Was ever life so like death before? M… - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

OF writing many books there is no end;
And I who have written much in prose and verse
For others' uses, will write now for mine,-
Will write my story for my better self,
As when you paint your portrait for a friend,
Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it
Long after he has ceased to love you, just
To hold together what he was and is.

So we have great wars sometimes, and I put up Dumas’ flag, or Soulié’s, or Eugène Sue’s (yet he was properly possessed by the ‘Mystères de Paris’) and carry it till my arms ache.

As the green summer comes on you must be the better surely; if you can bear to lie out under the trees, the general health will rally and the local injury correct itself.