Had we never loved sae kindly,
Had we never loved sae blindly,
Never met or never parted,
We had ne'er been broken-hearted!--Burns.
Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those for others; deep as love.
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret;
O Death in Life! the days that are no more.--Tennyson.
Love, says Cowley, "is a great passion, and therefore I
hope I have done with it." I think most people will agree with this
sentiment. Love is such a tyrant, it leaves common sense so little to
say, that the majority of people are heartily glad when reason returns
to her throne and the thrilling lunacy is a remembrance instead of a
fact. The remembrance is sweet, and has no angry thorn, no peremptory
mandate. The young man is going along in the full enjoyment of his life,
when suddenly a huge coiled spring, the existence of which has not
attracted his notice, is loosed in his breast, his whole intellectual
forces centre on the attainment of one object, and a mental strain
begins which is of the exact nature of madness, and has ever been termed
so by people who have looked at things merely by what they have seen. In
the highly-feverish state of the brain the nerves of the whole system
soon become involved, the stomach refuses to perform its functions, and
physical emaciation and deep melancholia rapidly ensue. The obvious
reason is the insane state of the brain. Nature has suddenly impressed
that organ with the one idea that a certain fair maid is actually
without the faults of her associates. She is the prize of the whole
world! Had the world the information of her perfections which is lodged
in this young man's secret brain, there would be a war of extermination
for her possession--a second sack of Troy at the very least. Deep pity
for other men with wives, who cannot marry this maiden, and pity for
young men who have seemingly preferred other maidens, intermit with joy
that all the world has been so blind.