Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/109

 THE RANDALL FAMILY lOI

first are we anxious, fearing some great disaster, and dread- ing those various accidents by which they may be broken.

Roaming about early in life in quest of friendship and amidst innumerable objects of choice, dissatisfied with all ordinary relations, it was my happy lot, after many dis- appointments, to find over and over again all that my heart could wish — kind, loving, devoted friends dearer to me than life, the companions of all my pursuits. But merci- less Death has deprived me of nearly all, Estrangement (always less desirable than Death) of one ; yet I feel happy not to have shut up my sympathies on that account. I still love the dead in their graves without feeling less of affection for the living ; and, of all the living out of my own family, I do nowhere feel so bound in sympathy as in yours — so many and so kind hearts, from whom if I am ever long absent, I feel a sensation wholly unknown to my childhood. I mean that of homesickness. Much does the thought please me that warm affections will continually more and more bind us all together.

Far, then, be the day when the inevitable law of nature shall be put in operation against us by which flowers at the fulness of bloom presently fade, by which ripe fruits fall to the ground, by which the candle's brightest beam is quenched suddenly in darkness, and by which the very climax of health itself sinks thence into decay, and life itself, when fullest of action, hastens soonest Into the arms of Death. One boon is still granted us, however, which is this : so to serve our friends while they live with loving kindness that, when they die, we may lament only our loss, and not our delinquency. Rejoice with me in this, and keep your heart cheerful ; for many love you besides the friend whose hand here writes as his lips cannot speak, when, during the pleasure of seeing you, he occupies him-

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