WIFE.
Let us now consider affection where it appears in one of its sweetest forms,—in the love of a wife,—love, in the strength of which, hoping all things, she does not hesitate to quit her father and her mother and all dear to her to share the joys and sorrows of her husband. In prosperity she delights in his happiness, in sickness she watches over him, feeling more grief than she shows.
A young soldier, thus speaks of the affection of his wife:—
“For five campaigns
Did my sweet Lucy know
Each hardship and each toil
We soldiers undergo.
Nor ever did she murmur,
Or at her fate repine,
She thought not of her sorrow,
But how to lessen mine:
In hunger, or hard marching,
Whate’er the ill might be,
In her I found a friend,
Who ne’er deserted me:
And in my tent when wounded,
And when I sickening lay,
Oft from my brow with trembling hand,
She wiped the damps away.
And when this heart, my Lucy,
Shall cease to beat for thee,
Oh! cold, clay cold,
Full sure this heart must be.”