The winged lion on your desk has woken up; spirit and strength are his symbol. He shakes the troubled dream from his limbs, and tosses his mane; that gladdens me, and I will think of nothing else. Let what comes from without be left to Fate; within dwells the foe, in one's own breast. —
Scarcely ever, so it seems to me, has the fountain of your poetry gushed forth with greater copiousness and originality, than this time. Also, it is but a kind of justice to yourself, to give that indestructible deep Humour, so considerable an ingredient in your character, its due preponderance for once. Together with his brother Amor, the little boy-god has come down from the heights of Olympus to the human heart; and only where the one was glad to stay, would the other enter in.
I feel as though I had climbed a high hill, and were gazing at a wondrous evening-glow, the Hymn of all Creation!
Greeting and farewell!
Your Mathilde Wesendonck.
Source: Richard Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck, trans. William Ashton Ellis (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1905), No. 158