Page:Sarah Sheppard - L. E. L.pdf/114

 a music on the wind, inaudible to other ears, but full of strange prophecies to the dying; he stands on the threshold of existence, and already looks beyond it; his thoughts are on things not of this life; his affections are now the only limits that bind him to this earth; but never was their power so great; all other feelings have passed away. Ambition has gone down to the dust from which it so vainly rose; wealth is known to be the vilest dross of which chains were ever formed to glitter and to fall; hope has resigned the thousand rainbows which once gave beauty and promise to the gloomiest hour; all desires, expectations and emotions are vanished, excepting love, which grows the stronger as it approaches the source whence it came, and becomes more heavenly as it draws nigh to its birth-place—heaven." "Every feeling that looks to the future elevates human nature, for life is never so low, or so little, as when it concentrates itself on the present. The miserable wants, the small desires and the petty pleasures of daily existence, have nothing in common with those mighty dreams which, looking forward for action and action's reward, redeem the earth over which they walk with steps like those of an angel, beneath which spring up glorious and immortal flowers. The imagination is man's noblest and most spiritual faculty, and that ever dwells on the to-come."