In the noon and the afternoon of life, we still throb at the recollection of days when happiness was not happy enough, but must be drugged with the relish of pain and fear; for he touched the secret of the matter, who said of love,
"All other pleasures are not worth its pains:"
and when the day was not long enough, but the night
too must be consumed in keen recollections; when
the head boiled all night on the pillow with the
generous deed it resolved on; when the moonlight was
a pleasing fever, and the stars were letters, and the
flowers ciphers, and the air was coined into song;
when all business seemed an impertinence, and all the
men and women running to and fro in the streets,
mere pictures.
The passion re-makes the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant. Nature grows conscious. Every bird on the boughs of the tree sings now to his heart and soul. Almost the notes are articulate. The clouds have faces, as he looks on them. The trees of the forest, the waving grass and the peeping flowers have grown intelligent; and almost he fears to trust them with the secret which they seem to invite. Yet nature soothes and sympathizes. In the green solitude he finds a dearer home than with men.
"Fountain heads and pathless groves,
Places which pale passion loves,
Moonlight walks, when all the fowls
Are safely housed, save bats and owls,
A midnight bell, a passing groan,
These are the sounds we feed upon."
