“Then dry that tearful e’e, Jean,
My soul langs to be free, Jean,
And angels beckon me to the land of the leal.
“Then fare thee well, my ain Jean,
This world’s care is vain, Jean,
We’ll meet, and ay be fain, in the land of the leal.”
The feelings which may be clothed in words of earth, and the love which can be depicted by mortal language, must be shallow, light, and transient at the best. Those to whom love is but a creature of the imagination, and sorrow a pleasant fiction, may delight in dressing their fancies in eloquent phrases, and in dwelling on scenes of ideal distress. But the heart which has felt the deep-stirrings of true, holy, devoted affection, and known all the sad and stern realities of grief, which ever in this world must flow from feeling, shrinks from portraying it as from sacrilege; and while it feels how vain and unreal are the most eloquent descriptions, yet holds it a profanation to lay such feelings bare to the public gaze. It was not the cry of the true mother in her grief, “Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it!”
A week passed away; it seemed as if skill and tenderness and rest might perchance prolong the precious life of the invalid officer. He was certainly better; stronger, with less pain
and weariness, and there was no longer so much opposition on the part of the doctors to the general wish of himself and his family to transport him to Southampton.
Hilary longed to move him. The heat, the glare, the dust, the noise, the weariness of a town, to her eyes were indescribable; and she could not imagine the possibility of any one recovering their health without the fresh air, the sunshine and shadows, the soft breezes, the pleasant scents, and the soothing sounds of the country and the forest.