End of the world -- Fiction; Epidemics -- Fiction; Science fiction; Twenty-first century -- Fiction
To leave the country of our fathers, made holy by their graves!—We
could not feel even as a voluntary exile of old, who might for pleasure
or convenience forsake his native soil; though thousands of miles might
divide him, England was still a part of him, as he of her. He heard of
the passing events of the day; he knew that, if he returned, and
resumed his place in society, the entrance was still open, and it
required but the will, to surround himself at once with the
associations and habits of boyhood. Not so with us, the remnant. We
left none to represent us, none to repeople the desart land, and the
name of England died, when we left her,
In vagabond pursuit of dreadful safety.
Yet let us go! England is in her shroud,—we may not enchain ourselves
to a corpse. Let us go—the world is our country now, and we will choose
for our residence its most fertile spot. Shall we, in these desart
halls, under this wintry sky, sit with closed eyes and folded hands,
expecting death? Let us rather go out to meet it gallantly: or
perhaps—for all this pendulous orb, this fair gem in the sky’s diadem,
is not surely plague-striken—perhaps, in some secluded nook, amidst
eternal spring, and waving trees, and purling streams, we may find
Life. The world is vast, and England, though her many fields and wide
spread woods seem interminable, is but a small part of her. At the
close of a day’s march over high mountains and through snowy vallies,
we may come upon health, and committing our loved ones to its charge,
replant the uprooted tree of humanity, and send to late posterity the
tale of the ante-pestilential race, the heroes and sages of the lost
state of things.
Hope beckons and sorrow urges us, the heart beats high with
expectation, and this eager desire of change must be an omen of
success. O come! Farewell to the dead! farewell to the tombs of those
we loved!—farewell to giant London and the placid Thames, to river and
mountain or fair district, birth-place of the wise and good, to Windsor
Forest and its antique castle, farewell! themes for story alone are
they,—we must live elsewhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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