troubled, too worldly, and too sullen for song. Alas for pleasure, and still more for what made it pleasure!
But, still more, I regret the energy of industry which I once knew. I no longer delight in employment for the mere exertion—I am so easily fatigued and disheartened. I see too clearly the worthlessness of fulfilled hope. How vain seems so much that I once so passionately desired!—and yet, not always. The more disgusted I am with the present—with its faithless friends, its petty vanities, and its degrading interests—the more intensely does my existence blend itself with the future—the more do I look forward with an engrossing and enduring belief, that the creative feeling, the ardent thought, have not poured themselves forth wholly in vain. Good Heaven! even to myself how strange appears the faculty, or rather the passion, of composition! how the inmost soul developes its inmost nature on the written page! I, who lack sufficient confidence in my most intimate friends to lay bare even an ordinary emotion—who never dream of speaking of what occupies the larger portion of my time to even my most familiar companions—yet rely on the sympathy of the stranger, the comprehension of those to whom I am utterly unknown. But I neither
