Dearest Agnes,
I am sorry for not responding to your letters sooner, work has taken up all my day. Business here in London has been good, but it takes much of my attention. I adore reading your letters, and I think it is fine that you are trying your hand at poetry. Remember when you would read from Keats or Wordsworth while we lay in the wheat field under our tree? I’ve been thinking about those sunny afternoons more and more recently. I had a rare hour of freedom last Friday, I went out for a stroll and found myself on Piccadily. I went into Hatchards, and began exploring the newest titles on the shelves. I found you my fairest Agnes, a present.
Apparently it is a book of Persian poetry translated by some English fellow that’s all the rage these days. There were some copies more fine than this one, but I think you will appreciate the front gold lettering and the bevelled pages more than fancy baubles littering the cover. The lettering and images inside are very foreign in style–Persian I suppose like the original author, Omar Khayam I believe. I could not find a name for the illustrator inside this edition, but the clerk at Hatchards was able to identify the artist as some Hungarian painter. The pictures are quite exotic, I’m sure I’ll need you to interpret what exactly they’re supposed to mean. One image beside the title page depicts two lions in a ruined Persian palace in the snow. I have absolutely no clue as to its importance or meaning, perhaps you will have an idea? I am eager to return to New York, but I still have yet another week until the passage west. I hope you are as impatiently counting the days as I am. To add to your yearning I will tease you with a few verses from your present:
“Ah, make the most of what we spend / yet may spend, / Before we too into the Dust / descend; / Dust into Dust, and under / Dust, to lie, / Sans Wine, sans Song, sans / Singer, and–sans End (stanza 23)!”
This inscription lies beside an image of a dark tower with a figure standing near the top wearing a black robe and some sort of crow-mask. Very ominous, but the verse itself is quite unusual. Here’s another part:
“Ah, Moon of my Delight who / know’st no wane, / The Moon of Heaven is / rising once again: / How oft hereafter rising / shall she look / Through this same Garden / after me – in vain (stanza 74)!”
That last one is beside an image even more curious than the first one. A nude girl is bowing before a headstone in a graveyard. How the verse and image are connected are likely too advanced questions to ask me. Though I hope you are fascinated to solve these poetic mysteries when I see you. I will do my best to write more often. I am missing you terribly.
All my love, your Alfie.