Has nought to do with joy or care;
So if the light of light be gone,
There come no sorrows crowding on,
And powerless lies DESPAIR.'
The third drawing is a landscape, having in the foreground a head-stone, with a skull and crossbones in the semi-circular head. On the stone are carved the words, HIC JACET. Distant peaked hills bound the view. Two pines are to the right of the picture, and the crescent moon, which represents a human profile, is accommodated with a pipe. Underneath it is inscribed the sentence:
'MARTINI LUIGI IMPLORA ETERNA QUIETE!'
The following letter, written to Leyland a little later, shows again the stormy perturbations of Branwell's mind. He still clings to the fond imagination that he is the object of the lady's unwavering devotion; and, with the incoherency of the monomania with which he continues to be afflicted, he solemnly declares to the sculptor that he had said to no one what he is then saying to him; while, in truth, he was telling the story of his disappointed hopes to all who would hear the recital. The theme is that of a wild, eager, and unavailing love—whose joys and sorrows he tells in vivid words—which he believes to be returned with equal energy and passion.
'My dear Sir,
'I am going to write a scrawl, for the querulous egotism of which I must entreat your mercy; but, when I look upon my past, present, and future, and then into my own self, I find much, however unpleasant, that yearns for utterance.
'This last week an honest and kindly friend has warned me that concealed hopes about one lady should be given up, let the effort to do so cost what it may. He is the ——, and was commanded by ——, M.P. for ——, to return me, unopened, a letter which I addressed to ——, and which the Lady was not permitted to see. She too, surrounded by powerful persons who hate me like Hell, has sunk into religious melancholy, believes that her weight of sorrow is God's punishment, and hopelessly resigns herself to her doom. God only knows what it does cost, and will, hereafter, cost me, to tear from my heart and remembrance the thousand recollections that rush upon me at the thought of four years gone by. Like ideas of sunlight to a man who has lost his sight, they must be bright phantoms not to be realized again.