My heart never changes—tell me, dearest, can thine
E’er love with an ardor so deathless as mine?
Is it surprising, that such an experience, acting upon such a temperament, has driven me from society, not as a misanthrope—not as a misogynist, but as a cold intellectualist. I must henceforth look for my enjoyment to the abstract pleasures of the understanding. A heart which was formed to open and expand in the atmosphere which gladdens the fireside, must stifle its emotions in the bustle of political life, in the fierce encounter of contending minds, or in the endless, absorbing pursuit of gain. I must hereafter dissever the mind from the heart, and content myself with being the civilized savage, which all men would have been, if woman had never existed, or if the religion she reveres had never exalted her character. For with all his boasting, what is man’s mind, without her influence? It is like the rough sketch of the painter, in which the prominent parts only are developed. As it requires the utmost refinement of his art, to give these rugged outlines grace and beauty, to call into being the living landscape and the speaking eye; thus it is, beautifully, the part of woman, to fill out the rugged outlines of man’s mind, with those refined virtues, which embellish his character. It is for her to touch with the radiance of Mercy, the stern lineaments of Justice; she must shade away Ferocity, with the tints of Mildness; she must hide every blemish, with the coloring of her own purity; she must brighten every dark spot, with the brilliancy of her own innocence; she must throw over the roughness of the whole, the magic of her own refined sensibility.
Such has been the experience of a Sensitive Man: it is not without a moral for those who are not too wise to learn from the errors of others.
THE WHALE’S LAST MOMENTS.
A LAMP-LIGHT MUSING.
I’m king—I’m king of the ‘vasty deep,’
My palace down ’mid the rocks I keep,—
But what see I now o’er the waters sweep?
Indeed—’tis a foe!—a foe!
Ah! fatal shaft!—and a crimson wave!—