The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863

'Alas! our young affections run to waste,Or water but the desert; whence ariseBut weeds of dark luxuriance, tares of haste,Rank at the core, though tempting to the eyes,Flowers whose wild odors breathe but agonies,And trees whose gums are poison; such the plantsWhich spring beneath her steps, as Passion fliesO'er the world's wilderness, and vainly pantsFor some celestial fruit forbidden to our wants.'O Love! no habitant of earth thou art—An unseen seraph, we believe in thee;A faith whose martyrs are the broken heart,But never yet hath seen, nor e'er shall seeThe naked eye, thy form, as it should be;The mind hath made thee, as it peopled heavenEven with its own desiring phantasy,And to a thought such shape and image given,As haunts the unquenched soul—parched—wearied—wrung and riven.'Of its own beauty is the mind diseased,And fevers into false creation:—where,Where are the forms the sculptor's soul hath seized?In him alone. Can Nature show so fair?Where are the charms and virtues which we dareConceive in boyhood and pursue as men,The unreached Paradise of our despair,Which o'er informs the pencil and the pen,And overpowers the page where it would bloom again?'Who loves, raves—'tis youth's frenzy—but the cureIs bitterer still; as charm by charm unwindsWhich robed our idols, and we see too sureNor worth nor beauty dwells from out the mind'sIdeal shape of such; yet still it bindsThe fatal spell, and still it draws us on,Reaping the whirlwind from the oft-sown winds;The stubborn heart, its alchemy begun,Seems ever near the prize—wealthiest when most undone.'We wither from our youth, we gasp away—Sick—sick; unfound the boon—unslaked the thirst,Though to the last, in verge of our decaySome phantom lures, such as we sought at first—But all too late, so are we doubly cursed.Love, fame, ambition, avarice—'tis the same,Each idle—and all ill—and none the worst—For all are meteors with a different name,And Death the sable smoke where vanishes the flame.'Few—none—find what they love or could have loved,Though accident, blind contact, and the strongNecessity of loving, have removedAntipathies—but to recur, ere long,Envenomed with irrevocable wrong;And circumstance, that unspiritual godAnd miscreator, makes and helps alongOur coming evils with a crutch-like rod,Whose touch turns hope to dust—the dust we all have trod.'Our life is a false nature—'tis not inThe harmony of things,—this hard decree,This uneradicable taint of sin,This boundless Upas, this all blasting tree.Whose root is earth, whose leaves and branches beThe skies which rain their plagues on men like dew—Disease—death—bondage—all the woes we see—And worse—the woes we see not—which throb throughThe immedicable soul, with heartaches ever new.'

Again:

'What is the worst? Nay, do not ask—In pity from the search forbear:Smile on—nor venture to unmaskMan's heart, and view the hell that's there!'

Merciful God! how men suffer when they fly from Thee. When they refuse to listen to the sublime voice implanted within, which calls them to Thee, forever reminding them that they were made for things infinite, eternal! O ye men of pleasure, it is the very greatness of your nature which torments you: there is nothing save God capable of filling the immeasurable depths of your longing! How different the language of Klopstock, as already quoted: 'What recompense could I ask? I have tasted the cup of angels in singing of my Redeemer!'

One of the most dangerous, yet most brilliant among the novelists of the present day, says:

'Properly speaking, love is not a violent aspiration of every faculty toward a created being; it is rather a holy thirst of the most ethereal part of our being for the unknown. Tormented with intuitions of an eternal love, filled with torturing and insatiate desires for the infinite, we vainly seek their gratification in the dying forms which surround us, and obstinately adorn our perishable idols with that immaterial beauty which haunts our dreams. The emotions of the senses do not suffice us; in the treasure house of the simple joys of nature there is nothing sufficiently exquisite to fill our high demands; we would fain grasp heaven, and it is not within our reach. Then we seek it in a creature fallible as ourselves; we expend upon it all the high energies given us for far nobler ends. We refuse to worship God, and kneel before a worm like ourselves! But when the veil falls, when we see behind the clouds of incense and the halos woven by love, only a miserable and imperfect creature—we blush for our delusion, overturn our idol in our despair, and trample it rudely under foot. But as we must love, and will not give our hearts to God, for whom they were created, we seek another idol—and are again deceived! Through this bitter, bitter school we are purified and enlightened, until, abandoning all hope of finding perfection on earth, we are at last ready to offer God that pure, but now broken-hearted worship, which should never have been given save to Him alone.'—George Sand.

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1

Negro of West Indian birth. Creole, used alone, signifies a West Indian white.

2

However, I should say that there are portions of Western Africa where trustworthy accounts give to the negroes a widely different and far more favorable character.

3

Mr. Underhill's account, so far as it goes, corroborates this description.

4

It will be understood that I speak only of his remarks upon the economical aspect of emancipation.

5

Different estimates conflict as to numbers, though all agreeing in the fact of an extensive and steady decline. I have used a statement which appeared trustworthy.

6

This was an absurd and wicked expedient for keeping him free from family interests.

7

This African epithet for the whites is said, in the original, to bear the complimentary signification of 'devil.'

8

This is partly owing to the unwillingness of continued from previous page: the negroes to remove to an unaccustomed place; but also, I think, to their rooted conviction that the only security for their independence is in having possession of the soil.

9

Hanover has about one nineteenth of the whole population of the island. But the economical condition of the parishes varies too widely to make that of any one a basis for a general estimate.

10

In common, they are by no means either so tawdry or so ostentatious as they have the credit of being.

11

A gradual change is, indeed, observable, but as yet, it is only an incipient one.