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النشر الإلكتروني

THE PASSIONATE PILGRIM

OR

EROS AND ANTEROS.

BOOK I.

I My heart was hot within me: the fire kindled: and at the last I spake with my tongue;—How have I sinned, that I should thus be punished? Ignorant of the secrets of this world's governance, dimly knowing myself, confessing error, yet anxious to find the truth--I cannot, however, in the appeal to remembrance, in the heat of fancy, before the dispassionate assizes of reason, see cause for the infliction of pain so severe that remorse surely has no skarper stings, nor shame more enduringly distressful. He who has smitten knows the cause, and I dare not ask Him the duration. But by the many years' experience I shall here recount, I am assured this regret will not leave me for life: by remembrance of its human origin I cannot wish it effaced hereafter, except on one condition, unrecorded in any vision even of the heaven above the heavens.

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Why again should I write of these things, trivial world's ear, terrible in my own recollection? To set and, were it possible, eternalize in true words a ta mine, is an impulse so strong, it has affected so through all ages, that one may justly esteem it base in our human nature-an ultimate fact: the fire there is no other answer. Natural too is what such fession often receives, a verdict of vanity or weaknes the strong and the successful; for wealth cannot stand poverty. Whilst he thinks it harsh and partia writer of course anticipates this judgment. Those from better fortunes, or feelings less sensitive, cannot the strange relief lying in the imagined sympathy known fellow-creatures, as they read, if they read, will or moralize-preach patience or forgetfulness-try by the test of utility-turn from the hateful spects pain, and close disgust with derision. Put away the I have nothing recondite to tell, nothing worth lo 'for; nothing either unheard of by you, or new in 'to any human creature'. But all men are not happiness-hardened, or will esteem a sincere Liber A weak or vain-a mere display of folly or of egotism Ove sia chi per prova intenda amore, Spero trovan pietà, non che perdono.

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Those, again, not inexperienced themselves in evi recognize that in this mysterious dispensation of suffering seemingly unmerited in degree and endle severity most defies explanation, and most provokes search of any courageous and inquiring spirit; that on a scale of infinite minuteness, the central perplexi the world's riddle is involved. Far from the writer is say-Je ne suis fait comme aucun de ceux que j'ai even for alleviation's sake, he would not care to write,

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alone can annihilate the most trivial of atoms ( ultimate truth Omnipotence itself be not here lim so no man can really put by the past, or separate from self. That the vis vivida of identity varies mu degree, I do not deny; yet the most broken and pla of lives has its own unity. It is the same things v are perpetually changing: annihilation is impossible in spiritual world, as in the material; [we are at once, merely what we are, but what we were, and what shall be.

I cannot write with art, but only to lighten this I to say once more how much I have prized her: althou be indeed too late for mercy, to cry to God once more Augustine, Da quod amo; amo enim; et hoc tu ded Most who have described the course of love are careful to narrate the circumstances and crises of pas than attempt a picture of the words, thoughts, or i sensations of the passion itself. But if he had the fac the narrator would want the wish to compose a roma to corrupt reality by ornamental fiction or 'moral 'pose'; he can write only the things which he seen, and the things which are'. Words indeed their limits; like colours, they are foiled at each tremity, by the sunlight and by the gloom of nat Yet although without expressions into which I can tr fuse the elixir of their sweetness or the wormwood their despair, I desire, so far as it may be possi to render in language the feelings that can come once in life, but which will throughout colour, and survive it to paint them with the fewest and plain words I can; in the most English English. I do even wish to draw the fleeting cloud, only to fix the h that paled it with death, or crimsoned it into gl

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