And those, Lenore, who live to see their country's hopeless
ruin, plunge into a sadness at heart that no other loss can equal, no
remaining blessing mitigate,--neither the devotion of a wife nor the
perfection of a child. You have seen exiles from a lost land? Pride is
dead in them, hope is dead, ambition is dead, joy is dead. Tell me,
would you choose me to suffer the personal loss of love and you, a loss
I could hide in my aching soul, or to bear those black marks of gall and
melancholy which forever overshadow them in widest grief and gloom?"
She had sunk upon a seat, and was looking up at me with a pained
unwavering glance, as if in my words she foresaw my fate.
"You are too intense!" she cried. "Your tones, your eyes, your gestures,
make it an individual thing with you."
"And so it is!" I exclaimed. "I cannot sleep in peace, nor walk upon the
ways, while these Austrian bayonets take my sunshine, these threatening
approaching French banners hide the fair light of heaven!"
"Come," she said, rising. "Speak no more. I am tired of the burden of
the ditty, dear; and it may do you such injury yet that already I hate
it. Come out again into our garden with me. Dismiss these cares, these
burning pains and rankling wounds. Be soothed by the cool evening air,
taste the gorgeous quiet of sunset, gather peace with the dew.
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