But I should draw a wide distinction between the discontent which instigates us to improve our lot, and the desire, the desiderium, the poisonous mixture of longing and sorrow, defiance and despair, which bids us only rend our garments, scatter ashes on our heads, and sit down in the dust unmanly to repine. It is the difference between the Brownie and the Fiend. Of all evil spirits I think this last is the most fatal, the most accursed. We can none of us forget how our father Abraham, standing at his tent door on the plains of Mamre, entertained three angels unawares. And we, too, his descendants, are always on the look-out for the visitors from heaven. Do they ever tarry with any of us for more than a night’s lodging? Alas! that the very proof of our guest’s celestial nature is the swiftness with which he vanishes at daybreak like a dream. But oftener the stranger we receive, though coming from another world, is not from above. His beauty, indeed, seems angelic, and he is clad in garments of light. For a while we are glad to be deceived, cherishing and prizing our guest, the more perhaps for those very qualities which should warn us of his origin. So we say to him, “Thou art he for whom we have been looking. Abide with us here for ever.” And he takes us at our word.
Henceforth the whole house belongs to the ghost. When we go to dinner, he sits at the head of the table. Try to shame him away with laughter, and you will soon know the difference between mirth and joy. Try to drown him with wine. No. Don’t try that. It is too dangerous an experiment, as any doctor who keeps a private mad-house will tell you. Our duties we undertake hopelessly and languidly, because of his sneer, which seems to say, “What is the use? Am I not here to see that you reap no harvest from your labour, earn no oblivion with your toil?” And for our pleasures—how can we have any pleasures in that imperious presence, under the lash of that cruel smile?
Even if we leave our home and walk abroad, in hope to free ourselves from the tenacious incubus, it is in vain. There is beauty in the outside world, quiet in the calm distant skies, peace in the still summer evening, but not for us—nevermore for us—
“Almost upon the western wave
Rested the broad bright sun,
When that strange shape drove suddenly
Betwixt us and the sun.”
Ay, therein lurks our curse. We bear the presence well enough when cold winds blow and snow falls, or when all the landscape about is bleak and bare and scathed by bitter frosts. The cruel moment is that in which we feel a capability of enjoyment still left but for our affliction, a desire to bask in his rays, a longing to turn our faces towards his warmth—
“When that strange shape drives suddenly
Betwixt us and the sun.”