For ever soaring to the sun, he was for ever
realizing the fine Grecian fable of Icarus; and the sea of
disappointment into which he perpetually fell, with its tumultuous tides
and ever-chafing billows, bearing him on from whirlpool to whirlpool,
for ever battling and for ever lost. He was unconscious, as we have
said, of the entrance and approach of his lieutenant, and words of
bitterness, in soliloquy, fell at brief periods from his lips.--
"It is after all the best--" he mused. "Despair is the true philosophy,
since it begets indifference. Why should I hope? What prospect is there
now, that these eyes, that lip, these many graces, and the imperial
pride of that expression, which looks out like a high soul from the
heaven that men talk and dream of--what delusion is there now to bid me
hope they ever can be more to me than they are now? I care not for the
world's ways--nor feel I now the pang of its scorn and its outlawry; yet
I would it were not so, that I might, upon a field as fair as that of
the most successful, assert my claim, and woo and win her--not with
those childish notes of commonplace--that sickly cant of sentimental
stuff which I despise, and which I know she despises no less than I.
Pages:
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620