The Yale Literary Magazine (Vol. I, No. 2, March 1836)Various
General
The Yale Literary Magazine (Vol. I, No. 2, March 1836)
Various
College students' writings, American -- Connecticut -- New Haven -- Periodicals; Yale University -- Periodicals
Is it surprising, that such an experience, acting upon such a
temperament, has driven me from society, not as a misanthrope—not as a
misogynist, but as a cold intellectualist. I must henceforth look for my
enjoyment to the abstract pleasures of the understanding. A heart which
was formed to open and expand in the atmosphere which gladdens the
fireside, must stifle its emotions in the bustle of political life, in
the fierce encounter of contending minds, or in the endless, absorbing
pursuit of gain. I must hereafter dissever the mind from the heart, and
content myself with being the civilized savage, which all men would have
been, if woman had never existed, or if the religion she reveres had
never exalted her character. For with all his boasting, what is man’s
mind, without _her_ influence? It is like the rough sketch of the
painter, in which the prominent parts only are developed. As it requires
the utmost refinement of his art, to give these rugged outlines grace
and beauty, to call into being the living landscape and the speaking
eye; thus it is, beautifully, the part of woman, to fill out the rugged
outlines of man’s mind, with those refined virtues, which embellish his
character. It is for her to touch with the radiance of Mercy, the stern
lineaments of Justice; she must shade away Ferocity, with the tints of
Mildness; she must hide every blemish, with the coloring of her own
purity; she must brighten every dark spot, with the brilliancy of her
own innocence; she must throw over the roughness of the whole, the magic
of her own refined sensibility.
Such has been the experience of a Sensitive Man: it is not without a
moral for those who are not too wise to learn from the errors of others.
THE WHALE’S LAST MOMENTS.
A LAMP-LIGHT MUSING.
I’m king—I’m king of the ‘vasty deep,’
My palace down ’mid the rocks I keep,—
But what see I now o’er the waters sweep?
Indeed—’tis a foe!—a foe!
Ah! fatal shaft!—and a crimson wave!—
But I’ll flee, I’ll flee to my ocean cave;
My palace there—it shall be my grave,
And the deep shall o’er me flow.
Yet, death to the foe!—for again I come
Up, up from the depths of my ocean home—
But, ah!—in a shroud of the white sea-foam
An expiring thing I lie.
And I see, in this darkly flashing light,
Which coldly falls on my misty sight,
Like the elfish glare of a polar night,
The future before my eye.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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