Lady Chatterley's Lover; D.H. Lawrence

Mellor's letter:

That's why I don't like to start thinking of you actually. It only tortures me, and does you no good. I don't want you to be away from me. But if I start fretting, it wastes something. Patience, always patience. This is my fortieth winter. And I can't help all winters that have been. But this winter I'll stick to my pentecost flame, and have some peace. And I won't let the breath of people blow it out. I believe in a higher mystery, that doesn't even let the crocus be blown out. And if you're in a Scotland and I'm in the Midlands, and I can't put my arms round you, and wrap my legs round you, yet I've got something of you. My soul softly flaps in the pentecost flame with you, like the peace of fucking. We fucked a flame into being. Even the flowers are fucked into being, between sun and earth. But it's a delicate thing, and takes patience and the long pause.

So I love chastity now, because it is the peace that comes of fucking. I love being chaste now. I love it as snowdrops love the snow. I love this chastity, which is the pause and peace of our fucking, between us now like a snowdrop of forked white fire. And when the real spring comes, when the drawing together comes, then we can fuck the little flame brilliant and yellow, brilliant. But not now, not yet! Now is the time to be chaste, it is so good to be chase, like a river of cool water in my soul. I love the chastity now that flows between us. It is like fresh water nad rain. How can men want wearisomely to philander. What a misery to be like Don Juan, and impotent ever to fuck oneself into peace, and the little flame alight, impotent and unable to be chaste in the cool between-whiles, as by a river.

Well, so many words, because I can't touch you. If I could sleep with my arm round you, the ink could stay in the bottle. We could be chaste together just as we can fuck together. But we have to be separate for a while, and I suppose it is really the wiser way. If only one were sure.

Never mind, never mind we won't get worked up. We'll really trust in the little flame, and in the unnamed god that shields it from being blow out. There's so much of you here with me, really -- that it's a pity you aren't all here.