'I think of it more and more as the years go on,
and with more and more gratitude towards the Power that
dispenses such afflictions. Your health, my darling, my
studious quiet, our little kitchen delicacies, how they
would all have suffered, how they would all have been
sacrificed! And for what? Children are the last word of
human imperfection. Health flees before their face. They
cry, my dear; they put vexatious questions; they demand to
be fed, to be washed, to be educated, to have their noses
blowed; and then, when the time comes, they break our
hearts, as I break this piece of sugar. A pair of
professed egoists, like you and me, should avoid offspring,
like an infidelity.'
'Indeed!' said she; and she laughed. 'Now, that is like
you--to take credit for the thing you could not help.'
*
I have been made to learn that the doom and burthen of our
life is bound for ever on man s shoulders, and when the
attempt is made to cast it off, it but returns upon us with
more unfamiliar and more awful pressure.
*
Forth from the casement, on the plain
Where honour has the world to gain,
Pour forth and bravely do your part,
O knights of the unshielded heart!
'Forth and for ever forward! --out
From prudent turret and redoubt,
And in the mellay charge amain,
To fall, but yet to rise again!
Captive? Ah, still, to honour bright,
A captive soldier of the right!
Or free and fighting, good with ill?
Unconquering but unconquered still!
O to be up and doing, O
Unfearing and unshamed to go
In all the uproar and the press
About my human business!
My undissuaded heart I hear
Whisper courage in my ear.
Pages:
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79