(_Translated for the Irish Penny Journal._)
No. VI.--THE REMORSE OF A NIGHT.
The last night of the year was about to expire; the winds, after a day
of storminess, had subsided into slumber; the white earth lay outspread,
like a shrouded map, under the moon; and innumerable stars arose out from
the remotest abysses of heaven, twinkling as brightly as though they had
but then begun their existence, and were never to suffer impairment.
Eleven o’clock had tolled from the tower of an ancient Gothic church; and
as the vibrations died away on the transparent air, an Old Man drew nigh
to the window of a dark room in the desolate dwelling of which he had
long been the solitary tenant, and cast his dull despairful eyes upwards
towards the immoveable firmament, and from thence down on the blank waste
of the earth, and then breathed a groaning prayer, that those eyes might
never survey that firmament or that earth again. Wretched was he, in
truth, that Old Man, beyond all parallel and beyond all consolation--for
his grave lay open for him, as it seemed, by his side; it was thinly
covered over, not by the flowers of Youth, but by the snows of Age; and
when, heartsick of the sight, he looked away from it into himself, he saw
that the sole fruits that he had gathered from a long and eventful life
were sins, regrets, and maladies--a decayed body, a plague-smitten soul,
a bosom full of bitterness, and an old age full of remorse. The beautiful
days of his youth now came again before him like ghosts, and resummoned
to his remembrance the cheerful morning upon which his venerable father
had first placed him upon the great Cross-road of Life--a road which,
trodden on the right hand, conducts the pilgrim along the noonday path
of Virtue into a spacious, joyous land, abounding in sunbeams, harvests,
and angelic spirits, but which, followed on the left, betrays him through
lampless and miry ways, into the rueful wildernesses of Vice, where
serpents for ever swarm, and pestilence chokes the atmosphere, and to
quench his burning thirst the sluggish black rivers yield him but slime
and poison.
Alas! the serpents were now coiled about him--the poison was rilling
through his heart! Alas for him! he knew too well which road he had
chosen--where he was--and what he must undergo--for eternity--for
eternity!
With an anguish, with an agony, with a despair, that language cannot even
faintly pourtray, he uplifted his withered arms towards heaven, clasped
his hands, and cried aloud, O! give me back, give me back my youth! O! my
father, lead me once more to the Cross-road, that I may once more choose,
and this time choose with foreknowledge!
But his cries wasted themselves idly upon the frozen air, for his father
was no more, and his youth was no more--both had alike long, long ago
evanished, never to reappear. He knew this, and he wept--yes, that
miserable old man wept; but his tears relieved him not; they were like
drops of hot lava, for they trickled from a burning brain.
He looked forth, and he saw flitting lights--wills-o’-the-wisp--dancing
over the morasses and becoming extinguished in the burial-grounds; and he
said, Such were my riotous days of folly! He again looked forth, and he
beheld a star fall from heaven to earth, and there melt away in blackness
that left no trace behind, and he said, I am that star!--and with that
woeful thought were torn open anew the leprous wounds in his bosom which
the serpents that clung around him would never suffer to be healed.
His morbid imagination, wandering abroad till it touched on the confines
of frenzy, showed him figures of sleep-walkers traversing like shadows
the roofs of the houses:--the chimneys widened into furnaces vomiting
forth flames and monsters--the windmills lifted up their giant arms,
and threatened to crush him--and a forgotten spectre, left behind in
a deserted charnel-house, glared on him with a horrible expression of
malignity, and then mocked his terror by assuming his features.
On a sudden there flowed out upon the air a deep, rich, and solemn stream
of music. It came from the steeple of the old Gothic church, as the bells
announced the birth of the new year, for it was now the twelfth hour.
Its cadences fell with a thrilling distinctness upon the ear and the
heart of the Old Man; and every tone in the melody, through the agency
of that mysterious power which sound possesses of re-assembling within
the forsaken halls of the soul images long departed, brought before his
mind some past scene of his life, vivid as a panoramic picture. Again
he looked round upon the lucid horizon and over the frosted earth; and
he thought on the opportunities he had forfeited--the warnings he had
slighted--the examples he had scoffed at. He thought upon the friends
of his youth, and how they, better and more fortunate than he, were now
good men, at peace with themselves--teachers of wisdom to others, fathers
of blessed families, torchlights for the world--and he exclaimed, Oh!
and I also, had I but willed it, I also might, like them, have seen with
tearless eyes, with tranquil heart, this night depart into eternity! Oh,
my dear father--my dear, dear mother! I, even I, might have been now
happy, had I but hearkened to your affectionate admonitions--had I but
chosen to profit by the blessings which on every returning New Year’s
Morn like this your tenderness led you to invoke on my head!
Amid these feverish reminiscences of his youth, it appeared to him as
though the spectre which had assumed his features in the charnel-house
gradually approached nearer and nearer to him--losing, however, as it
advanced, one trait after another of its spectral character--till at
length, as if under the dominion of that supernatural influence which on
the last night of the old year is popularly said to compel even the Dead
to undergo a change of form, it took the appearance of a living young
man--the same young man that he had himself been fifty years before.
He was unable to gaze any longer: he covered his face with his hands;
and, as the blistering tears gushed from his eyes, he sank down,
powerless and trembling, on his knees--and again he cried out, as if his
heart would break, O! come back to me, lost days of my youth!--come back,
come back to me once more!
And the supplication of the Penitent was not made in vain, for they came
back to him, those days of his youth, but not yet lost! He started from
his bed--the blue moonbeams were shining in through the windows--the
midnight chimes were announcing the beginning of a new year. Yes!--all
had been but an appalling dream--all, except his sins and transgressions:
these, alas! were but too real, for conscience, even in sleep, is a
faithful monitor. But he was still young--he had not grown old in
iniquity--and with tears of repentance he thanked God for having, even by
means of so terrific a vision, awakened in his heart a feeling of horror
for the criminal career he had been pursuing, and for having revealed to
him in that glimpse of a land full of sunbeams, harvests, and angelic
spirits, the blissful goal in which, if he pleased, the path of his
existence might yet terminate.
Youthful reader! on which of these two paths art thou? On the right-hand
path? Go forward, then, with the blessing of thy Maker, and fear nothing!
On the left-hand path? If so, pause: be forewarned--turn while yet thou
mayest--retrace thy steps--make a happier choice! I will pray that the
terrors of this ghastly Dream may not hereafter be arrayed in judgment
against thee! Alas for thee, if the time ever come when thou shalt call
aloud in thy despair, Come back, ye precious days of my youth!--unlike
the dreamer, _thou_ wilt but be mocked by the barren echo of thine own
lamentation--the precious days of thy youth will never, never come back
to thee!