None of the playing sparkle in this love, which belongs to the flame of my sea-coal fire that is now dancing, lively as a cricket. But on looking about my garret chamber, I can see nothing that resembles the archangel Raphael, or “thy fair Eve.”
There is a degree of moisture about the sea-coal flame, which with the most earnest of my musing, I find it impossible to attach to that idea of a waving sparkling heart which my fire suggests. A damp heart must be a foul thing to be sure. But whoever heard of one?
Wordsworth somewhere in the Excursion says:
The good die first,
And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket!
What, in the name of Rydal Mount, is a dry heart? A dusty one, I can conceive of: a bachelor’s heart must be somewhat dusty, as he nears the sixtieth summer of his pilgrimage—and hung over with cobwebs, in which sit such watchful gray old spiders as avarice, and selfishness, forever on the lookout for such bottle-green flies as lust.
“I will never”—said I—gripping at the elbows of my chair—“live a bachelor till sixty—never, so surely as there is hope in man, or charity in woman, or faith in both!”
And with that thought my heart leaped about in playful coruscations, even like the flame of the sea-coal—rising, and wrapping round old and tender memories and images that were present to me—trying to cling, and yet no sooner fastened than off—dancing again, riotous in its exultation—a succession of heart-sparkles, blazing, and going out!
—And is there not—mused I—a portion of this world forever blazing in just such lively sparkles, waving here and there as the air-currents fan them?