"
His brow was marked by care and anxiety, and he seemed ambitious
to win a name. "Fear first assailed the child, and he trembled and
screamed; but at a frown, with youth came love, torturing the hapless
bosom, where fierce flames of rage, resentment, jealousy contend.
Disturbed ambition presented next, to bid him grasp the moon and
waste his days in angry sighs, add deep rivalry for shadows, till
to conclude the wretched catalogue, appears pale avarice, straining
delusive counters to his breast, e'en in the hour of death." Such are
human passions.
It was evening; the curtains of the west were tinged with the varied
dyes of sunset, and nature seemed revived by the cool, fresh evening
breeze, and smiled complacently beneath the sun's last ray. The full
orbed moon arose in the east, and the crystal streams reflected
myriads of diamonds beneath her silver beams, and the stars, those
golden lamps of night, shone bright in the blue chambers of the sky.
An aged man was leaning on his staff, the vigor of life had departed,
his locks were thin and scattered, his palsied limbs would scarce
perform their office. His eye was dim--no longer beaming with
intelligence, and he muttered to himself, as he groped his way along,
worn out with the cares, sorrows and perplexities of a busy life,
deep furrows were upon his cheeks, and his whole appearance bespoke
a weary, way-worn child of earth. He took his solitary way, down a
retired path, thickly shaded with fir, holly and yew, through whose
thick foliage the struggling moonbeam scarce could penetrate, and
the air was filled with humid vapors, gloomy silence as of the tomb
reigned around, but exhausted nature sank, and the aged man pillowed
his head upon the bosom of earth, and closed his weary eyes to rest,
for he was a homeless wanderer.
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