Look back, then,
through the long track of the past years. How has it been with thee?
Are there bright beacons of happiness enjoy'd, and of good done by the
way? Glimmer gentle rays of what was scatter'd from a holy heart? Have
benevolence, and love, and undeviating honesty left tokens on which
thy eyes can rest sweetly? Is it well with thee, thus? Answerest thou,
it is? Or answerest thou, I see nothing but gloom and shatter'd hours,
and the wreck of good resolves, and a broken heart, filled with
sickness, and troubled among its ruined chambers with the phantoms of
many follies?
O, youth! youth! this dream will one day be a _reality_--a reality,
either of heavenly peace or agonizing sorrow.
And yet not for all is it decreed to attain the neighborhood of the
three-score and ten years--the span of life. I am to speak of one
who died young. Very awkward was his childhood--but most fragile and
sensitive! So delicate a nature may exist in a rough, unnoticed plant!
Let the boy rest;--he was not beautiful, and dropp'd away betimes. But
for the cause--it is a singular story, to which let crusted worldlings
pay the tribute of a light laugh--light and empty as their own hollow
hearts.
Love! which with its cankerseed of decay within, has sent young men
and maidens to a long'd-for, but too premature burial. Love! the
child-monarch that Death itself cannot conquer; that has its tokens on
slabs at the head of grass-cover'd tombs--tokens more visible to the
eye of the stranger, yet not so deeply graven as the face and the
remembrances cut upon the heart of the living.
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