"We join in the fraud, and ourselves we deceive,
What we wish to be true, love bids us believe."
When at last the pale hue of death overspread her once-blooming cheek, when she turned her languid eye towards her lover and faltered "farewell," when she closed her faded eyes and expired in prayer, Charles stood by the bedside like a being bereft of power and motion. The deepest despair overwhelmed him—his hopes were blasted—his fond creation of future bliss was in an instant destroyed, and his mind received a shock too powerful for nature to sustain.
From this moment a smile was never seen to illuminate his features, the most gloomy and secluded places were his favourite haunts. He avoided society as if the breath of man was pestilential; and occupied his time in brooding over his own melancholy. In his manuscript we find a number of melancholy effusions, which were evidently written about this time; and clearly bespeak a mind bordering on the gloomy verge of insanity. But as they are some of them by far the best pieces in the collection—a proof that poetry and madness are nearly allied—we will select two which tend to illustrate the awful state of the writer's mind.
THE EVENING WALK.
"How soothing to the soul the shade
Which evening spreads around!
How bright the dewy gems that braid
The foliage of the ground.
No sound is heard thro' ether wide,
From hill or coppice green,
Save where the streamlet seems to chide
The stillness of the scene.
Contagion catches on the soul,
And lulls e'en grief to rest;
No more contending passions roll
Along the troubled breast.
I seem a moment to have lost
The sense of former pain;
As if my peace had ne'er been crost,
Or joy could spring again.
But ah! 'tis there!—the pang is there;
Maria breathes no more!
So fond, so constant, kind, and fair,
Her reign of love is o'er.
No more through scenes like these shall we
Together fondly stray;
Till night itself would seem to me
More genial than the day.