I never heard
Of any true affection, but ‘t was nipt
With care, that, like the caterpillar, eats
The leaves of the spring’s sweetest book, the rose.
MIDDLETON.
IT is a common practice with those who have outlived the susceptibility
of early feeling, or have been brought up in the gay heartlessness of
dissipated life, to laugh at all love stories, and to treat the tales
of romantic passion as mere fictions of novelists and poets. My
observations on human nature have induced me to think otherwise. They
have convinced me that, however the surface of the character may be
chilled and frozen by the cares of the world, or cultivated into mere
smiles by the arts of society, still there are dormant fires lurking
in the depths of the coldest bosom, which, when once enkindled, become
impetuous, and are sometimes desolating in their effects. Indeed, I am
a true believer in the blind deity, and go to the full extent of his
doctrines. Shall I confess it?--I believe in broken hearts, and the
possibility of dying of disappointed love! I do not, however, consider
it a malady often fatal to my own sex; but I firmly believe that it
withers down many a lovely woman into an early grave.
Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forth
into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but the embellishment
of his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of the acts. He
seeks for fame, for fortune for space in the world’s thought, and
dominion over his fellow-men. But a woman’s whole life is a history of
the affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strives
for empire--it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She
sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in
the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless--for
it is a bankruptcy of the heart.
To a man, the disappointment of love may occasion some bitter pangs;
it wounds some feelings of tenderness--it blasts some prospects of
felicity; but he is an active being--he may dissipate his thoughts in
the whirl of varied occupation, or may plunge into the tide of pleasure;
or, if the scene of disappointment be too full of painful associations,
he can shift his abode at will, and taking, as it were, the wings of the
morning, can “fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, and be at rest.”
But woman’s is comparatively a fixed, a secluded, and meditative life.
She is more the companion of her own thoughts and feelings; and if they
are turned to ministers of sorrow, where shall she look for consolation?
Her lot is to be wooed and won; and if unhappy in her love, her heart
is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned,
and left desolate.
How many bright eyes grow dim--how many soft cheeks grow pale--how many
lovely forms fade away into the tomb, and none can tell the cause that
blighted their loveliness! As the dove will clasp its wings to its side,
and cover and conceal the arrow that is preying on its vitals--so is
it the nature of woman, to hide from the world the pangs of wounded
affection. The love of a delicate female is always shy and silent. Even
when fortunate, she scarcely breathes it to herself; but when otherwise,
she buries it in the recesses of her bosom, and there lets it cower and
brood among the ruins of her peace. With her, the desire of her heart
has failed--the great charm of existence is at an end. She neglects all
the cheerful exercises which gladden the spirits, quicken the pulses,
and send the tide of life in healthful currents through the veins. Her
rest is broken--the sweet refreshment of sleep is poisoned by melancholy
dreams--“dry sorrow drinks her blood,” until her enfeebled frame sinks
under the slightest external injury. Look for her, after a little while,
and you find friendship weeping over her untimely grave, and wondering
that one, who but lately glowed with all the radiance of health and
beauty, should so speedily be brought down to “darkness and the worm.”
You will be told of some wintry chill, some casual indisposition, that
laid her low;--but no one knows of the mental malady which previously
sapped her strength, and made her so easy a prey to the spoiler.
She is like some tender tree, the pride and beauty of the grove;
graceful in its form, bright in its foliage, but with the worm preying
at its heart. We find it suddenly withering, when it should be most
fresh and luxuriant. We see it drooping its branches to the earth, and
shedding leaf by leaf, until, wasted and perished away, it falls even in
the stillness of the forest; and as we muse over the beautiful ruin,
we strive in vain to recollect the blast or thunderbolt that could have
smitten it with decay.
I have seen many instances of women running to waste and self-neglect,
and disappearing gradually from the earth, almost as if they had been
exhaled to heaven; and have repeatedly fancied that I could trace their
deaths through the various declensions of consumption, cold, debility,
languor, melancholy, until I reached the first symptom of disappointed
love. But an instance of the kind was lately told to me; the
circumstances are well known in the country where they happened, and I
shall but give them in the manner in which they were related.
Every one must recollect the tragical story of young E----, the Irish
patriot; it was too touching to be soon forgotten. During the troubles
in Ireland, he was tried, condemned, and executed, on a charge of
treason. His fate made a deep impression on public sympathy. He was so
young--so intelligent--so generous--so brave--so every thing that we are
apt to like in a young man. His conduct under trial, too, was so lofty
and intrepid. The noble indignation with which he repelled the charge of
treason against his country--the eloquent vindication of his
name--and his pathetic appeal to posterity, in the hopeless hour of
condemnation,--all these entered deeply into every generous bosom, and
even his enemies lamented the stern policy that dictated his execution.
But there was one heart whose anguish it would be impossible to
describe. In happier days and fairer fortunes, he had won the affections
of a beautiful and interesting girl, the daughter of a late celebrated
Irish barrister. She loved him with the disinterested fervor of a
woman’s first and early love. When every worldly maxim arrayed itself
against him; when blasted in fortune, and disgrace and danger
darkened around his name, she loved him the more ardently for his very
sufferings. If, then, his fate could awaken the sympathy even of
his foes, what must have been the agony of her, whose whole soul was
occupied by his image? Let those tell who have had the portals of the
tomb suddenly closed between them and the being they most loved on
earth--who have sat at its threshold, as one shut out in a cold and
lonely world, whence all that was most lovely and loving had departed.
But then the horrors of such a grave!--so frightful, so dishonored!
There was nothing for memory to dwell on that could soothe the pang of
separation--none of those tender, though melancholy circumstances which
endear the parting scene--nothing to melt sorrow into those blessed
tears, sent like the dews of heaven, to revive the heart in the parting
hour of anguish.
To render her widowed situation more desolate, she had incurred her
father’s displeasure by her unfortunate attachment, and was an exile
from the parental roof. But could the sympathy and kind offices of
friends have reached a spirit so shocked and driven in by horror, she
would have experienced no want of consolation, for the Irish are a
people of quick and generous sensibilities. The most delicate
and cherishing attentions were paid her by families of wealth and
distinction. She was led into society, and they tried by all kinds of
occupation and amusement to dissipate her grief, and wean her from the
tragical story of her loves. But it was all in vain. There are some
strokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul--which penetrate to
the vital seat of happiness--and blast it, never again to put forth bud
or blossom. She never objected to frequent the haunts of pleasure, but
was as much alone there as in the depths of solitude; walking about in a
sad revery, apparently unconscious of the world around her. She
carried with her an inward woe that mocked at all the blandishments of
friendship, and “heeded not the song of the charmer, charm he never so
wisely.”
The person who told me her story had seen her at a masquerade. There can
be no exhibition of far-gone wretchedness more striking and painful than
to meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering like a spectre, lonely
and joyless, where all around is gay--to see it dressed out in the
trappings of mirth, and looking so wan and woe-begone, as if it had
tried in vain to cheat the poor heart into momentary forgetfulness of
sorrow. After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd with
an air of utter abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of an
orchestra, and, looking about for some time with a vacant air, that
showed her insensibility to the garish scene, she began, with the
capriciousness of a sickly heart, to warble a little plaintive air.
She had an exquisite, voice; but on this occasion it was so simple, so
touching, it breathed forth such a soul of wretchedness--that she drew a
crowd, mute and silent, around her and melted every one into tears.
The story of one so true and tender could not but excite great interest
in a country remarkable for enthusiasm. It completely won the heart of
a brave officer, who paid his addresses to her, and thought that one so
true to the dead, could not but prove affectionate to the living. She
declined his attentions, for her thoughts were irrevocably engrossed by
the memory of her former lover. He, however, persisted in his suit. He
solicited not her tenderness, but her esteem. He was assisted by
her conviction of his worth, and her sense of her own destitute and
dependent situation, for she was existing on the kindness of friends.
In a word, he at length succeeded in gaining her hand, though with the
solemn assurance, that her heart was unalterably another’s.
He took her with him to Sicily, hoping that a change of scene might
wear out the remembrance of early woes. She was an amiable and exemplary
wife, and made an effort to be a happy one; but nothing could cure the
silent and devouring melancholy that had entered into her very soul. She
wasted away in a slow, but hopeless decline, and at length sunk into the
grave, the victim of a broken heart.
It was on her that Moore, the distinguished Irish poet, composed the
following lines:
She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,
And lovers around her are sighing:
But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps,
For her heart in his grave is lying.
She sings the wild song of her dear native plains,
Every note which he loved awaking--
Ah! little they think, who delight in her strains,
How the heart of the minstrel is breaking!
He had lived for his love--for his country he died,
They were all that to life had entwined him--
Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried,
Nor long will his love stay behind him!
Oh! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest,
When they promise a glorious morrow;
They’ll shine o’er her sleep, like a smile from the west,
From her own loved island of sorrow!