Page:Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli (IA memoirsofmargare02fullrich).pdf/175

Rh my eyes; for before I had regarded her as a being cold, and abstracted, if not scornful.”

Cold, abstracted, and scornful! About this very time it was that Margaret wrote in her journal: — ‘Father, let me not injure my fellows during this period of repression. I feel that when we meet my tones are not so sweet as I would have them. O, let me not wound! I, who know so well how wounds can burn and ache, should not inflict them. Let my touch be light and gentle. Let me keep myself uninvaded, but let me not fail to be kind and tender, when need is. Yet I would not assume an overstrained poetic magnanimity. Help me to do just right, and no more. O, make truth profound and simple in me!’ Again: — ‘The heart bleeds, — faith almost gives way, — to see man’s seventy years of chrysalis. Is it not too long? Enthusiasm must struggle fiercely to burn clear amid these fogs. In what little, low, dark cells of care and prejudice, without one soaring thought or melodious fancy, do poor mortals — well-intentioned enough, and with religious aspiration too — forever creep. And yet the sun sets to-day as gloriously bright as ever it did on the temples of Athens, and the evening star rises as heavenly pure as it rose on the eye of Dante. O, Father! help me to free my fellows from the conventional bonds whereby their sight is holden. By purity and freedom let me teach them justice.’ And yet again: — ‘There comes a consciousness that I have no real hold on life, — no real, permanent connection with any soul. I seem a wandering Intelligence, driven from spot to spot, that I may learn all secrets, and fulfil a circle of knowledge. This thought envelopes me as a cold atmosphere. I