“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art not in lone splendor hung aloft the night and watching with eternal lids apart. Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite. The moving waters at their priestlike task of pure ablution round earth’s human shores, or gazing on the new soft fallen masque of snow upon the mountains and the moors. No, yet still steadfast, still unchangeable pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast. To feel forever its soft swell and fall, awake forever in a sweet unrest. Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath and so live ever, or else swoon to death.”
John: We will live in the country.
Fanny: Close to Mama.
John: And our bedroom will look out onto a little apple orchard and beyond that, a mountain in a mist.
Fanny: We can make a garden where every sort of wildflower grows.
John: And we will go to bed while the sun is still high.
Fanny: And when it becomes dark, the moon will shine through the shutters.
John: And I will hold you close, and kiss your breasts, your arms, your waist.
Fanny: Everywhere.
John: Touch has a memory.
Fanny: I know it.