Undine's New Soul

... And if he ever left, what would be left of me? I can't imagine a world in which he doesn't exist, now that the sole memory of his astounding eyes always brings a smile to my glum face.

I feel like Undine, a water nymph who was created without a soul, and who obtained one by marrying a mortal. With it, she also obtained pain and suffering. Maybe life was much, much easier when love wasn't roaming around my heart, but I'm not willing to get back to that path now that I've seen what true happiness looks like. What if he ever got tired of this awful distance? I have to work hard to tighten this bond across the Pacific Ocean. I can't imagine how things would be if this ever shattered, if I had to go back to a soulless life. Anyway, now that I have a soul, some aspects of life seem to hurt me much more than they would hurt somebody else (I don't know, it's how I feel). Maybe a soul is actually a dagger. Why can't he be here to stop this wound from bleeding? Why can't I be there to recover the sunshine in my eyes?

Undine was never meant to be Penelope, and yet mine is a life of waiting!


Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand
Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore
Alone upon the threshold of my door
Of individual life, I shall command
The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand
Serenely in the sunshine as before,
Without the sense of that which I forbore -
Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land
Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine
With pulses that beat double. What I do
And what I dream include thee, as the wine
Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue
God for myself, He hears that name of thine,
And sees within my eyes the tears of two.

—Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnet VI