Marriage Is Usually Considered The Grave, And

My Heart Was Fashioned To Be Susceptible Of Love And Sympathy, And When Wrenched By Misery To Vice And Hatred, It Did Not Endure The Violence Of The Change Without Torture Such As You Cannot Even Imagine.

For A Moment My Soul Was Elevated From Its Debasing And Miserable Fears To Which These Sights Were The Monuments And The Remembrances. For An Instant I Dared To Shake Off My Chains, And Look Around Me With A Free And Lofty Spirit; But The Iron Had Eaten Into My Flesh, And I Sank Again, Trembling And Hopeless, Into My Miserable Self.

I Also Became A Poet, And For One Year Lived In A Paradise Of My Own Creation; I Imagined That I Also Might Obtain A Niche In The Temple Where The Names Of Homer And Shakespeare Are Consecrated.

Ennui, The Demon, Waited At The Threshold Of His Noiseless Refuge, And Drove Away The Stirring Hopes And Enlivening Expectations, Which Form The Better Part Of Life.

There Is Something At Work In My Soul Which I Do Not Understand. I Am Practically Industrious - Painstaking, A Workman To Execute With Perseverance And Labour - But Besides This There Is A Love For The Marvellous, A Belief In The Marvellous, Intertwined In All My Projects, Which Hurries Me Out Of The Common Pathways Of Men, Even To The Wild Sea And Unvisited Regions I Am About To Explore.