 | ||
| Lord Byron |
 |
| Countess Guiccioli |
My dearest Teresa,
I have read this book in your garden. My love, you were absent, or else I could not have read it. It is a favourite book of yours, and the writer was a favourite friend of mine. You will not understand these English words, and others will not understand them…which is the reason I have not scrawled then in Italian. But you will recognize the handwriting of him who passionately loved you, and you will divine that, over a book which was yours, he could only think of love.
In that word, beautiful in all languages, but most in yours – amor mio – is compared my existence here and hereafter, to what purpose you will decide, my destiny rests with you, and you are a woman, seventeen years of age, and two out of a convent, I wish you had stayed there, with all my heart, or at least, that I had never met you in your married state. But all this is too late; as if you did so, which last is a great consolation at all events.
But I more than love you and cannot cease to love you. Think of me sometimes, when the Alps and ocean divide us, but they never will, unless you wish it.
Byron.
