REMNANTS OF TIME.' 473 ,teach his chambers a fashionable mourning : But real anguish of heart needs none of these modish and dissembled sorrows. My soul is hung round with dark images in all her apartments, and every scene is sincere lamentation and death. I thought once I had some pretences to the courage of a man : But this is a season of untried distress : I now shudder at a thought, I start at shadows, my spirits are sunk, and horror has taken hold of me. I feel passions in me that were unknown before; love has its own proper grief and its peculiar anguish. Mourning love has those agonies and those sinkings of spirit which are known only to bereaved and virtuous lovers. I stalk about like a ghost in musing silence, till the gather- ing sorrow grows too big for the heart and bursts out into weak and unmanly wailings. Strange and overwhelming stroke in- deed ! It has melted all the man within me down to softness : My nature is gone back to childhood again : I would maintain the dignity of my age and my sex; but these eyes rebel and be- tray me ; the eyelids are full, they overflow ; the drops of love and grief trickle down my cheeks, and plow the furrows of age there before their time. How often in a day are these sluices opened afresh? The sight of every friend that knew her calls up my weakness and betrays my frailty. I am quite ashamed of myself. What shall I do ? Is there nothing of manhood left about my heart ? I will resist the passion, I will struggle with nature, l will grow indo- lent and forbid my tears. Alas, poor feeble wretch that I am ! In vain I struggle; in vain I resist: The assumed indolence . vanishes; the real passion works within, it swells and bears down all before it : The torrent rises and prevails hourly, and nature will have its way. Even the Son of God when he became Man, was found weeping at the tomb of a darling friend. Lazarus died and Jesus wept. O my soul, what shall I do to relieve this heart -ach? How shall I cure this painful sensibility ? Is there no opiate will reach it ? Whither shall I go to leave my sorrows behind me? I wander from one room to another, and wherever I go I still seem to seek her, but I miss her still. Ily imagination flatters me with her lovely image, and tempts me to doubt, is she dead indeed ? My fond imagination would fain forget her death-bed, and im- pose upon my hope that I shall find her somewhere. I visit her apartment, I steal into her closet : in days past when I hays missed her in the parlour, how often have I found the dear crea- ture in that beloved corner of the house, that sweet place of divine retirement and converse with heaven ? But even that closet is empty now. 1 go thither, and I retire in disappoint- ment and confusion. VOL. IX. I R
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