Page:Mrs Elwood 1843.pdf/21

Rh paint such a state, it is because I know it well. Alas! over how many things now does my regret take its last and deepest tone—despondency! I regret not the pleasures that have passed, but that I have no longer any relish for them. I remember so much, which, but a little while ago, would have made my heart beat with delight, and which I now think even tiresome. The society which once excited, is now wearisome. The book which would have been a fairy gift to my solitude, I can now scarcely read. So much for the moral world: and as for the imaginary world, I have overworked my golden vein. Some of the ore has been fashioned into fantastic, perhaps beautiful shapes, but now they are for others, and not for me! Once, a sweet face, a favourite flower, a thought of sorrow, touched every pulse with music. Now, half my time, my mind is too 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