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Soon after her e the holidays would come; and when I returned froone, for I was told that he and the Rector could not agree (the Rector's fault, of course), and he was about to remove to another place
No--besidesthat, though he know it not, I was aging as she was; for I could appreciate his excellence, which she could not: I would devote my life to the promotion of his happiness; she would destroy his happiness for the ratification of her own vanity 'Oh, if he could but know the difference!' I would earnestly exclaim 'But no! I would not have him see my heart: yet, if he could but know her hollowness, her worthless, heartless frivolity, he would then be safe, and I should be--ALMOST happy, though I ht never see hiusted with the folly and weakness I have so freely laid before him I never disclosed it then, and would not have done so had my own sister or my mother been with me in the house I was a close and resolute dissembler--in this one case at least My prayers, my tears, my wishes, fears, and lamentations, itnessed by myself and heaven alone
When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties, or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves, for which we can obtain and seek no sy creature, and which yet we cannot, or will not wholly crush, we often naturally seek relief in poetry--and often find it, too--whether in the effusions of others, which see case, or in our own attes in strains less musical, perchance, butand sy, or more powerful to rouse and to unburden the oppressed and swollen heart Before this ti froht relief twice or thrice at this secret source of consolation; and now I flew to it again, with greater avidity than ever, because I seemed to need it s and experience, like pillars of witness set up in travelling through the vale of life, to mark particular occurrences The footsteps are obliterated now; the face of the country ed; but the pillar is still there, to res hen it was reared Lest the reader should be curious to see any of these effusions, I will favour hiuid as the lines rief to which they owed their being:Oh, they have robbed me of the hope My spirit held so dear; They will not let hts to hear