THE BROKEN HEART.
I never heard Of any true affection, but 't was nipt With care, that, like the caterpillar, eats The leaves of the spring's sweetest book, the rose. MIDDLETON.
IT is a common practice with those who have outlived the susceptibilityof early feeling, or have been brought up in the gay heartlessness ofdissipated life, to laugh at all love stories, and to treat the talesof romantic passion as mere fictions of novelists and poets. Myobservations on human nature have induced me to think otherwise. Theyhave convinced me that, however the surface of the character may bechilled and frozen by the cares of the world, or cultivated into meresmiles by the arts of society, still there are dormant fires lurkingin the depths of the coldest bosom, which, when once enkindled, becomeimpetuous, and are sometimes desolating in their effects. Indeed, I ama true believer in the blind deity, and go to the full extent of hisdoctrines. Shall I confess it?--I believe in broken hearts, and thepossibility of dying of disappointed love! I do not, however, considerit a malady often fatal to my own sex; but I firmly believe that itwithers down many a lovely woman into an early grave.
Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads him forthinto the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but the embellishmentof his early life, or a song piped in the intervals of the acts. Heseeks for fame, for fortune for space in the world's thought, anddominion over his fellow-men. But a woman's whole life is a history ofthe affections. The heart is her world; it is there her ambition strivesfor empire--it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. Shesends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul inthe traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless--forit is a bankruptcy of the heart.
To a man, the disappointment of love may occasion some bitter pangs;it wounds some feelings of tenderness--it blasts some prospects offelicity; but he is an active being--he may dissipate his thoughts inthe whirl of varied occupation, or may plunge into the tide of pleasure;or, if the scene of disappointment be too full of painful associations,he can shift his abode at will, and taking, as it were, the wings of themorning, can "fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, and be at rest."
But woman's is comparatively a fixed, a secluded, and meditative life.She is more the companion of her own thoughts and feelings; and if theyare turned to ministers of sorrow, where shall she look for consolation?Her lot is to be wooed and won; and if unhappy in her love, her heartis like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned,and left desolate.
How many bright eyes grow dim--how many soft cheeks grow pale--how manylovely forms fade away into the tomb, and none can tell the cause thatblighted their loveliness! As the dove will clasp its wings to its side,and cover and conceal the arrow that is preying on its vitals--so isit the nature of woman, to hide from the world the pangs of woundedaffection. The love of a delicate female is always shy and silent. Evenwhen fortunate, she scarcely breathes it to herself; but when otherwise,she buries it in the recesses of her bosom, and there lets it cower andbrood among the ruins of her peace. With her, the desire of her hearthas failed--the great charm of existence is at an end. She neglects allthe cheerful exercises which gladden the spirits, quicken the pulses,and send the tide of life in healthful currents through the veins. Herrest is broken--the sweet refreshment of sleep is poisoned by melancholydreams--"dry sorrow drinks her blood," until her enfeebled frame sinksunder the slightest external injury. Look for her, after a little while,and you find friendship weeping over her untimely grave, and wonderingthat one, who but lately glowed with all the radiance of health andbeauty, should so speedily be brought down to "darkness and the worm."You will be told of some wintry chill, some casual indisposition, thatlaid her low;--but no one knows of the mental malady which previouslysapped her strength, and made her so easy a prey to the spoiler.
She is like some tender tree, the pride and beauty of the grove;graceful in its form, bright in its foliage, but with the worm preyingat its heart. We find it suddenly withering, when it should be mostfresh and luxuriant. We see it drooping its branches to the earth, andshedding leaf by leaf, until, wasted and perished away, it falls even inthe stillness of the forest; and as we muse over the beautiful ruin,we strive in vain to recollect the blast or thunderbolt that could havesmitten it with decay.
I have seen many instances of women running to waste and self-neglect,and disappearing gradually from the earth, almost as if they had beenexhaled to heaven; and have repeatedly fancied that I could trace theirdeaths through the various declensions of consumption, cold, debility,languor, melancholy, until I reached the first symptom of disappointedlove. But an instance of the kind was lately told to me; thecircumstances are well known in the country where they happened, and Ishall but give them in the manner in which they were related.
Every one must recollect the tragical story of young E----, the Irishpatriot; it was too touching to be soon forgotten. During the troublesin Ireland, he was tried, condemned, and executed, on a charge oftreason. His fate made a deep impression on public sympathy. He was soyoung--so intelligent--so generous--so brave--so every thing that we areapt to like in a young man. His conduct under trial, too, was so loftyand intrepid. The noble indignation with which he repelled the charge oftreason against his country--the eloquent vindication of hisname--and his pathetic appeal to posterity, in the hopeless hour ofcondemnation,--all these entered deeply into every generous bosom, andeven his enemies lamented the stern policy that dictated his execution.
But there was one heart whose anguish it would be impossible todescribe. In happier days and fairer fortunes, he had won the affectionsof a beautiful and interesting girl, the daughter of a late celebratedIrish barrister. She loved him with the disinterested fervor of awoman's first and early love. When every worldly maxim arrayed itselfagainst him; when blasted in fortune, and disgrace and dangerdarkened around his name, she loved him the more ardently for his verysufferings. If, then, his fate could awaken the sympathy even ofhis foes, what must have been the agony of her, whose whole soul wasoccupied by his image? Let those tell who have had the portals of thetomb suddenly closed between them and the being they most loved onearth--who have sat at its threshold, as one shut out in a cold andlonely world, whence all that was most lovely and loving had departed.
But then the horrors of such a grave!--so frightful, so dishonored!There was nothing for memory to dwell on that could soothe the pang ofseparation--none of those tender, though melancholy circumstances whichendear the parting scene--nothing to melt sorrow into those blessedtears, sent like the dews of heaven, to revive the heart in the partinghour of anguish.
To render her widowed situation more desolate, she had incurred herfather's displeasure by her unfortunate attachment, and was an exilefrom the parental roof. But could the sympathy and kind offices offriends have reached a spirit so shocked and driven in by horror, shewould have experienced no want of consolation, for the Irish are apeople of quick and generous sensibilities. The most delicateand cherishing attentions were paid her by families of wealth anddistinction. She was led into society, and they tried by all kinds ofoccupation and amusement to dissipate her grief, and wean her from thetragical story of her loves. But it was all in vain. There are somestrokes of calamity that scathe and scorch the soul--which penetrate tothe vital seat of happiness--and blast it, never again to put forth budor blossom. She never objected to frequent the haunts of pleasure, butwas as much alone there as in the depths of solitude; walking about in asad revery, apparently unconscious of the world around her. Shecarried with her an inward woe that mocked at all the blandishments offriendship, and "heeded not the song of the charmer, charm he never sowisely."
The person who told me her story had seen her at a masquerade. There canbe no exhibition of far-gone wretchedness more striking and painful thanto meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering like a spectre, lonelyand joyless, where all around is gay--to see it d
ressed out in thetrappings of mirth, and looking so wan and woe-begone, as if it hadtried in vain to cheat the poor heart into momentary forgetfulness ofsorrow. After strolling through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd withan air of utter abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of anorchestra, and, looking about for some time with a vacant air, thatshowed her insensibility to the garish scene, she began, with thecapriciousness of a sickly heart, to warble a little plaintive air.She had an exquisite, voice; but on this occasion it was so simple, sotouching, it breathed forth such a soul of wretchedness--that she drew acrowd, mute and silent, around her and melted every one into tears.
The story of one so true and tender could not but excite great interestin a country remarkable for enthusiasm. It completely won the heart ofa brave officer, who paid his addresses to her, and thought that one sotrue to the dead, could not but prove affectionate to the living. Shedeclined his attentions, for her thoughts were irrevocably engrossed bythe memory of her former lover. He, however, persisted in his suit. Hesolicited not her tenderness, but her esteem. He was assisted byher conviction of his worth, and her sense of her own destitute anddependent situation, for she was existing on the kindness of friends.In a word, he at length succeeded in gaining her hand, though with thesolemn assurance, that her heart was unalterably another's.
He took her with him to Sicily, hoping that a change of scene mightwear out the remembrance of early woes. She was an amiable and exemplarywife, and made an effort to be a happy one; but nothing could cure thesilent and devouring melancholy that had entered into her very soul. Shewasted away in a slow, but hopeless decline, and at length sunk into thegrave, the victim of a broken heart.
It was on her that Moore, the distinguished Irish poet, composed thefollowing lines:
She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps, And lovers around her are sighing: But coldly she turns from their gaze, and weeps, For her heart in his grave is lying.
She sings the wild song of her dear native plains, Every note which he loved awaking-- Ah! little they think, who delight in her strains, How the heart of the minstrel is breaking!
He had lived for his love--for his country he died, They were all that to life had entwined him-- Nor soon shall the tears of his country be dried, Nor long will his love stay behind him!
Oh! make her a grave where the sunbeams rest, When they promise a glorious morrow; They'll shine o'er her sleep, like a smile from the west, From her own loved island of sorrow!
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