Page:Ethel Churchill 2.pdf/288

286 die. You know not how weary I often feel, nor the cold sickness that often comes over me. The day is very long, and the night yet longer. Things that I used to love, now only fatigue me. I gaze into the sunshine, and my eyes close with its brightness. I look upon my flowers only to ask whether they or I shall be the first to fade. There was a time when I was sad to think of death, when I shuddered at the thought of the dark and cold tomb: but God, in his mercy, allowed not such terror to last. I used to shrink from the grave, where love was not; but I now feel that his love is with us even there. Few are the ties that now bind me to this weary world, and they will be with me in eternity. My father, it is your old age left childless that is my abiding sorrow. I fear your proud and self-sufficing nature. Who will force you to love when I am gone? You will be unhappy, and your unhappiness will take the seeming of sternness and of sarcasm: and yet, if you would allow it, there is one who would love you almost as much as I have done.