How often have we gleaned from those beauteous objects around, but aliment to our morbid griefs;--and turning towards the gurgling fountain of Ammonati, and gazing on its trickling waters, have vainly tried to arrest our trickling tears!
Chapter VIII.
Arguà
"There is a tomb in Arquà: rear'd in air,
Pillar'd in their sarcophagus, repose
The bones of Laura's lover."
"I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs."
How glorious is the thrill, which shoots through our frame, as we first wake to the consciousness of our intellectual power; as we feel the spirit--the undying spirit--ready to burst the gross bonds of flesh, and soar triumphant, over the sneers of others, and our own mistrust.
How does each thought seem to swell in our bosom, as if impatient of the confined tenement--how do the floating ideas congregate--how does each impassioned feeling subdue us in turn, and long for a worthy utterance!
This is a very bright moment in the history of our lives. It is one in which we feel--indubitably feel--that we are of the fashioning of God;--that the light which intellect darts around us, is not the result of education--of maxims inculcated--or of principles instilled;--but that it is a ray caught from the brightness of eternity--that when our wavering pulse has ceased to beat, and the etherialised elements have left the baser and the useless dust--that ray shall not be quenched; but shall again be absorbed in the full effulgence from which it emanated.
Surely then, if such a glorious moment as this, be accorded to even the inferior votaries of knowledge--to the meaner pilgrims, struggling on towards the resplendent shrines of science:--how must he--the divine Petrarch, who could so exquisitely delineate love's hopes and story, as to clothe an earthly passion, with half the attributes of an immortal affection:--how must he have revelled in the proud sensations called forth at such a moment!