I shall be calm anon!—I had
A pleasant dream of bliss;
And now they tell me I am mad—
Why should I mourn for this?
My good, kind parents! Answer ye,
For what I am, and am to be.
Alas! I have forgotten, dear,
The pledging and the vow;
There is a falsehood in my tear,
I do not love thee now:
Or how could I endure to go,
And look, and laugh, and leave thee so?
Thou shall not come to my caress,
Thou shalt not bear my name;
Nor sorrow in my wretchedness,
Nor wither in my shame;
Mine is the misery and the moan,
And I will die—but die alone!
Him too I saw carried to his narrow dwelling-place. In his latter days he had been regarded by his companions with a kind of superstitious awe; and, as his coffin fell with its solemn, reverberating sound, into its allotted space, the bearers looked upon each other with an expression of conscious mystery, and many shook their heads in silence. I[Pg 176] lingered round the spot when they departed, and planted a rose upon his humble mound.
I was to leave the village the next day in order to fix my abode among the haunts of busy men. In the evening, feeling a melancholy which I could not shake off, I took up my hat and wandered towards the churchyard. From a distance I perceived a bright and delicate figure hastily retiring from my approach. I leaned over the remains of the kind, the enthusiastic, the affectionate! The rose which I had planted there glistened beneath the moon. It was not the dew: it was something more clear, more precious—it was one beautiful tear! I had rather have such a tear on my grave than a pyramid of marble.
ON TRUE FRIENDSHIP.
“Infido scurræ distabit amicus.”—Horace.
How very seldom do we find any one who has a relish for real friendship—who can set a due value upon its approbation, and pay a due regard to its censures! Adulation lives, and pleases; truth dies, and is forgotten. The flattery of the fool is always pungent and delicious; the rebuke of the wise is ever irksome and hateful. Wherefore, then, do we accuse the Fates when they withhold from us the blessings of friendship, if we ourselves have not the capacity for enjoying them?
Schah Sultan Hossein, says an old Persian fable, had two favourites. Mahamood was very designing and smooth-tongued; Selim was very open and plain-spoken. After a space, the intrigues of Mahamood had the upper hand, and Selim was banished from the court. Then Zobeide, the mother of the Sultan’s mother, a wise woman, and one learned in all the learning of the Persians, stood before the throne, and spoke thus:[Pg 177]—