If there be joined to this a new association, one that nature and God
have both approved, then there is lifted up the sneer of the world, and
again the weakness of woman, the frivolity of humanity, is deplored by
those who demand that grief shall co-survive with remembrance. We do not
suffer so much as we think we ought to, and yet, foolish and illogical,
we call upon our fate in a grand monotony of complaint at the heaviness
of our ills. The young man falls in love. His love is not returned. He
has believed himself capable of undying and unalterable affection for a
maiden. Unselfish, therefore, it must endure, whether she love him or
not, for
HAS HE NOT PROCLAIMED IT TO HIS OWN SOUL?
She loves him not! The test is come. He must despise himself as a
shallow-hearted hind, or dwell in extacies of adoration over one who
will resign herself into the keeping of another, a thing most detestable
to this young man. Either horn of the dilemma shows him life, true life.
Not a poem or a dream, but as a range of mountains would form if they
were piled down from some other world; first a row of little peaks, then
monster heights arising where valleys hid, and valleys forming on the
points of peaks.
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