Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death,
echoes the divine verdict of Jesus of Nazareth over the sinful woman brought to him for the stern judgment of Moses, “Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone.”
******
Much remains unsaid that I would fain say. But it is time for me to close. And what words shall I choose for last words concerning my subject, who, if he were indeed my subject, would make me doubly royal, for was not he the crowned king of kindly wits?
He did not live to laugh, albeit he often laughed to live. There is, indeed, a marvel to us in his exterior mirthfulness, for he had a deep fount of sadness in his soul. The last lines of his magnificent “Ode to Melancholy” afford us the key to his inner nature:
There is no music in the life
That sounds with idle laughter solely;
There’s not a string attuned to mirth,