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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
susceptibility of early feeling, or have been brought up in the
gay heartlessness of dissipated life, to laugh at all love
stories, and to treat the tales of romantic passion as mere
fictions of novelists and poets. My observations on human nature
have induced me to think otherwise. They have convinced me that,
however the surface of the character may be chilled and frozen by
the cares of the world, or cultivated into mere smiles by the
arts of society, still there are dormant fires lurking in the
depths of the coldest bosom, which, when once enkindled, become
impetuous, and are sometimes desolating in their effects. Indeed,
I am a true believer in the blind deity, and go to the full
extent of his doctrines. Shall I confess it?--I believe in broken
hearts, and the possibility of dying of disappointed love! I do
not, however, consider it a malady often fatal to my own sex; but
I firmly believe that it withers down many a lovely woman into an
early grave.
Man is the creature of interest and ambition. His nature leads
him forth into the struggle and bustle of the world. Love is but
the embellishment of his early life, or a song piped in the
intervals of the acts. He seeks for fame, for fortune for space
in the world's thought, and dominion over his fellow-men. But a
woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is
her world; it is there her ambition strives for empire--it is
there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her
sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul in the
traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is
hopeless--for it 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 of felicity; but he is an active being--he may
dissipate his thoughts in the 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 the
morning, 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 they are 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 heart is 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 many lovely forms fade away into the tomb, and none can
tell the cause that blighted 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 is it the nature of woman, to hide
from the world the pangs of wounded affection. The love of a
delicate female is always shy and silent. Even when fortunate,
she scarcely breathes it to herself; but when otherwise, she
buries it in the recesses of her bosom, and there lets it cower
and brood among the ruins of her peace. With her, the desire of
her heart has failed--the great charm of existence is at an end.
She neglects all the cheerful exercises which gladden the
spirits, quicken the pulses, and send the tide of life in
healthful currents through the veins. Her rest is broken--the
sweet refreshment of sleep is poisoned by melancholy dreams--"dry
sorrow drinks her blood," until her enfeebled frame sinks under
the slightest external injury. Look for her, after a little
while, and you find friendship weeping over her untimely grave,
and wondering that one, who but lately glowed with all the
radiance of health and beauty, should so speedily be brought down
to "darkness and the worm." You will be told of some wintry
chill, some casual indisposition, that laid her low;--but no one
knows of the mental malady which previously sapped 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
preying at its heart. We find it suddenly withering, when it
should be most fresh and luxuriant. We see it drooping its
branches to the earth, and shedding leaf by leaf, until, wasted
and perished away, it falls even in the stillness of the forest;
and as we muse over the beautiful ruin, we strive in vain to
recollect the blast or thunderbolt that could have smitten 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 been exhaled to heaven; and have repeatedly
fancied that I could trace their deaths through the various
declensions of consumption, cold, debility, languor, melancholy,
until I reached the first symptom of disappointed love. But an
instance of the kind was lately told to me; the circumstances are
well known in the country where they happened, and I shall but
give them in the manner in which they were related.
Every one must recollect the tragical story of young E----, the
Irish patriot; it was too touching to be soon forgotten. During
the troubles in Ireland, he was tried, condemned, and executed,
on a charge of treason. His fate made a deep impression on public
sympathy. He was so young--so intelligent--so generous--so
brave--so every thing that we are apt to like in a young man. His
conduct under trial, too, was so lofty and intrepid. The noble
indignation with which he repelled the charge of treason against
his country--the eloquent vindication of his name--and his
pathetic appeal to posterity, in the hopeless hour of
condemnation, --all these entered deeply into every generous
bosom, and even his enemies lamented the stern policy that
dictated his execution.
But there was one heart whose anguish it would be impossible to
describe. In happier days and fairer fortunes, he had won the
affections of a beautiful and interesting girl, the daughter of a
late celebrated Irish barrister. She loved him with the
disinterested fervor of a woman's first and early love. When
every worldly maxim arrayed itself against him; when blasted in
fortune, and disgrace and danger darkened around his name, she
loved him the more ardently for his very sufferings. If, then,
his fate could awaken the sympathy even of his foes, what must
have been the agony of her, whose whole soul was occupied by his
image? Let those tell who have had the portals of the tomb
suddenly closed between them and the being they most loved on
earth--who have sat at its threshold, as one shut out in a cold
and lonely 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 of separation--none of those tender, though
melancholy circumstances which endear the parting scene--nothing
to melt sorrow into those blessed tears, sent like the dews of
heaven, to revive the heart in the parting hour of anguish.
To render her widowed situation more desolate, she had incurred
her father's displeasure by her unfortunate attachment, and was
an exile from the parental roof. But could the sympathy and kind
offices of friends have reached a spirit so shocked and driven in
by horror, she would have experienced no want of consolation, for
the Irish are a people of quick and generous sensibilities. The
most delicate and cherishing attentions were paid her by families
of wealth and distinction. She was led into society, and they
tried by all kinds of occupation and amusement to dissipate her
grief, and wean her from the tragical story of her loves. But it
was all in vain. There are some strokes of calamity that scathe
and scorch the soul--which penetrate to the vital seat of
happiness--and blast it, never again to put forth bud or blossom.
She never objected to frequent the haunts of pleasure, but was as
much alone there as in the depths of solitude; walking about in a
sad revery, apparently unconscious of the world around her. She
carried with her an inward woe that mocked at all the
blandishments of friendship, and "heeded not the song of the
charmer, charm he never so wisely."
The person who told me her story had seen her at a masquerade.
There can be no exhibition of far-gone wretchedness more striking
and painful than to meet it in such a scene. To find it wandering
like a spectre, lonely and joyless, where all around is gay--to
see it dressed out in the trappings of mirth, and looking so wan
and woe-begone, as if it had tried in vain to cheat the poor
heart into momentary forgetfulness of sorrow. After strolling
through the splendid rooms and giddy crowd with an air of utter
abstraction, she sat herself down on the steps of an orchestra,
and, looking about for some time with a vacant air, that showed
her insensibility to the garish scene, she began, with the
capriciousness of a sickly heart, to warble a little plaintive
air. She had an exquisite, voice; but on this occasion it was so
simple, so touching, it breathed forth such a soul of
wretchedness--that she drew a crowd, mute and silent, around her
and melted every one into tears.
The story of one so true and tender could not but excite great
interest in a country remarkable for enthusiasm. It completely
won the heart of a brave officer, who paid his addresses to her,
and thought that one so true to the dead, could not but prove
affectionate to the living. She declined his attentions, for her
thoughts were irrevocably engrossed by the memory of her former
lover. He, however, persisted in his suit. He solicited not her
tenderness, but her esteem. He was assisted by her conviction of
his worth, and her sense of her own destitute and dependent
situation, for she was existing on the kindness of friends. In a
word, he at length succeeded in gaining her hand, though with the
solemn assurance, that her heart was unalterably another's.
He took her with him to Sicily, hoping that a change of scene
might wear out the remembrance of early woes. She was an amiable
and exemplary wife, and made an effort to be a happy one; but
nothing could cure the silent and devouring melancholy that had
entered into her very soul. She wasted away in a slow, but
hopeless decline, and at length sunk into the grave, the victim
of a broken heart.
It was on her that Moore, the distinguished Irish poet, composed
the following 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!
Washington Irving's short story: The Broken Heart
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