“This beautiful springtime has temporarily baffled the disease, but for me there can be no restoration. Day by day I feel the ebbing of strength and energy, and the approach of my deliverer, death; but I realize also, what the Centaur uttered to Melampus, ‘I decline unto my last days 438 calm as the setting of the constellations; but I feel myself perishing and passing quickly away, like a snow-wreath floating on the stream.’”
As he looked at the thin, pure face where May sunshine streamed warm and bright, and marked the perfect peace that brooded over the changed features, Dr. Grey was reminded of the lines that might have been written for her, so fully were they suited to her case,—
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“I saw that one who lost her love in pain, Who trod on thorns, who drank the loathsome cup; The lost in night, in day was found again; The fallen was lifted up. They stood together in the blessed noon, They sang together through the length of days; Each loving face bent sunwards, like a moon New-lit with love and praise.” |
“My friend, the shadows are passing swiftly from your life, and, in the mild radiance of its close, you can well afford to forget the storms that clouded its dawn.”
“Forget? No, Dr. Grey, I neither endeavor nor desire to forget the sorrows that first taught me the emptiness of earthly things, the futility of human schemes,—that snapped the frail reed of flesh to which I clung, and gave me, instead, the blessed support, the immovable arm of an everlasting God. Ah! that woman was deeply versed in the heart-lore of her own sex, who wrote,—
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‘When I remember something which I had, But which is gone, and I must do without, When I remember something promised me, But which I never had, nor can have now, Because the promiser we no more see In countries that accord with mortal vow; When I remember this, I mourn,—but yet My happier days are not the days when I forget.’” |
“If Mrs. Carlyle possessed a tithe of your faith and philosophy, 439 how serene, how tranquilly useful her future years might prove.”
“In God’s own good time her trials will be sanctified to her eternal peace, and she will one day glide from grief to glory, for she can claim the promise of our Lord, ‘The pure in heart shall see God.’ No purer heart than Vashti Carlyle’s throbs this side of the throne where seraphim and cherubim hover.”
In the brief silence that succeeded, the governess observed the unusually grave and melancholy expression of her companion’s countenance, and asked, timidly,—
“Has anything occurred recently to distress or annoy you? You look depressed.”