My time has been passed viciously and agreeably; at thirty-one so few years, months, days, hours, or minutes remain that Carpe Diem 'is not enough. I have been obliged to crop even the seconds-for who can trust to tomorrow?' Oh Time! the beautifier of the dead, adorer of the ruin, comforter and only healer when the heart hath bled... Time, the avenger! Passion is the element in which we live; without it, we hardly vegetate. Poetry should only occupy the idle. The sword outwears its sheath, and the soul wears out the breast. And the heart must pause to breathe, and love itself have rest. There is no instinct like that of the heart. There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more. Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogether, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling. |
