me steady in an honorable ambition; favored by this calm, this obscurity of life, I might learn everything, did not feeling lavish away my strength. Let it be no longer thus. Teach me to think justly and act firmly. Stifle in my breast those feelings which, pouring forth so aimlessly, did indeed water but the desert, and offend the sun’s clear eye by producing weeds of rank luxuriance. Thou art my only Friend! Thou hast not seen fit to interpose one feeling, understanding breast between me and a rude, woful world. Vouchsafe then thy protection, that I may hold on in courage of soul!”[1]
Before midsummer it had been decided that the family should remove to Groton, and we find her writing from that village, July 4, 1833.
- ↑
Fuller MSS. i. 409. She was reading Shelley at this time,
and in his early poem On Death occur the lines: —
“O man, hold thee on in courage of soul
Through the stormy shades of thy worldly way.”
