“I believe the fault comes from a too-sweet sense of the freedom of being true with you, telling you all, hiding nothing.”

Connecting intimacy with the freedom to speak without concealment · Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, 15 June 1846

• Communication
• Freedom
• Truth

“I believe in you absolutely, utterly.”

A remarkably direct expression of the trust at the centre of their developing relationship · Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, 30 August 1845

• Love
• Sincerity
• Trust

“You speak out, you,—I only make men and women speak—give you truth broken into prismatic hues, and fear the pure white light, even if it is in me.”

A striking description of his dramatic method of revealing truth through imagined voices · Letter to Elizabeth Barrett, 13 January 1845

• Poetry
• Style
• Truth