"And how often we have talked, too, of that Carian shepherd who spent
his damp nights upon the hills, gazing as I do on the lustrous planet!
Who will revel with her amid those old superstitions? Who, from our own
unlegended woods, will evoke their yet undetected, haunting spirits? Who
peer with her in prying scrutiny into nature's laws, and challenge
the whispers of poetry from the voiceless throat of matter? Who laugh
merrily over the stupid guesswork of pedants, that never mingled with
the infinitude of nature, through love exhaustless and all-embracing, as
we have? Poor girl! she will be companionless.
"Alas! companionless forever-save in the exciting stages of some brisk
flirtation. She will live hereafter by feeding other hearts with love's
lore she has learned from me, and then, Pygmalion-like, grow fond of the
images she has herself endowed with semblance of divinity, until they
seem to breathe back the mystery the soul can truly catch from only one.
"How anxious she will be lest the coroner shall have discovered any of
her notes in my pocket!
"I felt chilly as this last reflection crossed my mind, partly at
thought of the coroner, partly at the idea of Mary being unwillingly
compelled to wear mourning for me, in case of such a disclosure of our
engagement. It is a provoking thing for a girl of nineteen to have to go
into mourning for a deceased lover at the beginning of her second winter
in the metropolis.
"The water, though, with my motionless position, must have had something
to do with my chilliness. I see, sir, you think that I tell my story
with great levity; but indeed, indeed I should grow delirious did I
venture to hold steadily to the awfulness of my feelings the greater
part of that night. I think, indeed, I must have been most of the time
hysterical with horror, for the vibrating emotions I have recapitulated
did pass through my brain even as I have detailed them.
"But as I now became calm in thought, I summoned up again some
resolution of action.
"I will begin at that corner (said I), and swim around the whole
inclosure. I will swim slowly and again feel the sides of the tank with
my feet. If die I must, let me perish at least from well-directed though
exhausting effort, not sink from mere bootless weariness in sustaining
myself till the morning shall bring relief.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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