In Memoriam Maud (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ...youthful joys, Tho' the deep heart of existence beat forever like a boy's? Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and I linger on the shore. And the individual withers, and the world is more and more. Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers, and he bears a laden breast, Full of sad experience, moving toward the stillness of his rest. Hark, my merry comrades call me, sounding on the bugle-horn, They to whom my foolish passion were a target for their scorn: Shall it not be scorn to me to harp on such a moulderd string? I am shamed thro' all my nature to have loved so slight a thing. Weakness to be wroth with weakness woman's pleasure, woman's pain--Nature made them blinder motions bounded in a shallower brain: Woman is the lesser man, and all thy passions, match'd with mine, Are as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine--Here at least, where nature sickens, nothing. Ah, for some retreat Deep in yonder shining Orient, where my life began to beat; Where in wild Mahratta-battle fell my father evilstarrd;--I was left a trampled orphan, and a selfish uncle's ward. Or to burst all links of habit--there to wander far away. On from island unto island at the gateways of the day. Larger constellations burning, mellow moons and happy skies, Breadths of tropic shade and palms in cluster, knots of Paradise. Never comes the trader, never floats an European flag, Slides the bird o'er lustrous woodland, swings the trailer from the crag; Droops the heavy-blossom'd bower, hangs the heavyfruited tree--Summer isles of Eden lying in dark-purple spheres of sea. There methinks would be enjoyment more than in this march of mind, In the steamship, in the railway, in the thoughts that shake mankind. There the passions cramp'd no longer shall have scope and...