The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844. Various
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her as she sits, the beautiful creation!—delighting to magnify the qualities of the idol of her affections and to depreciate herself in the comparison; overlooking, perhaps incapable of once imagining the thought of his harsh and selfish and impracticable nature, and constantly endowing him with all the fresher breathings of her spiritual existence—like the Rainbow of the Waterfall, that clothes, with its own celestial dyes, the dark and shapeless mass of Rock upon whose bosom it appears to dwell! faltering, trembling, quivering, fading, disappearing; returning, resting;—glowing, yet never dazzling; liquid, yet sustained!
‘It were all one
That I should love a bright particular star
And seek to wed it, he is so above me:
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be comforted, not in his sphere.
The hind that would be mated by the lion
Must die for love!
This is the way in which these precious irradiations of joy beam and hover over man; startled and frightened often out of the presence even of his image while they thus adorn and decorate him; and then they love him for what they fondly dream to be the halo of his proper spirit; for the light and tenderness, the purity, the gentleness, the refinement and grace, that have their life and element and colour, only in the deep yet overflowing heart of Woman in her Love!
But then comes Wedlock; and often, with wedlock, comes marriage; or succeeds it; the marriage that God bestowed on man in Eve, when, according to that scriptural and exquisite conception, they twain become one. When the Rock shall as by a miracle receive into all its crevices, interstices, and pores, the beautiful existence that has played upon it! When the soul of man opens at every noble passion in succession and at every pulse, to embrace, imbibe, absorb, receive, possess, acquire, the being that we call Woman! finds her in every former want, or present wish, or bright, or unfrequented passage of the soul; now all occupied, all satisfied by her; fancies thoughts to be his thoughts which are her thoughts; and blesses himself, when he discovers it, that imaginations in themselves so sweet, should in some visit of her delicate spirit have been breathed into his Essence from a source so pure! is near her, when distant; is present with her, when absent; converses with her, without words; gazes upon her, without sight; listens to her, without sound; watches her, without motion; and has not yet lost her balmy presence when Death shall long have removed forever that precious image from his corporal sense. This is Marriage.
Out of this state descends that profound expression of the soul in Milton, (God make us thankful for him!) when he intends the verb that he escapes in the passage that adorns my Essay, should be supplied by a pulsation in the breast of Eve:
‘yet loss of thee
Would never—from my heart.’
Would never?—would never be torn, out-rooted, obliterated, banished, extinguished, forgotten, diminished, obscured, from his heart. The throb of her spirit is to supply the word, or mould the thought, and vivify the pause so as to satisfy her full affection to its utmost contentment and desire. This is marriage. This is attainment to that state of more perfect existence which terrestrial life procures for the soul of man, never thenceforth in all its future changes to be lost. The incorporeal mingling, the mystical union of two varied emanations of life; as Light and Heat intermarry in their offset and passage from the sun; and Truth and Love from the breast of The Ineffable!
How can I live without thee! how forego
Thy sweet converse and love so dearly join’d
To live again in these wild woods forlorn?
Should God create another Eve and I
Another rib afford, yet loss of thee
Would never from my heart: no, no, I feel
The link of nature draw me.
Bone of my bone thou art and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe.
And shall the passage of one such soul across the mere brook of Death dissolve affiances so deep, so latent, and so pure as this? This Life of Life, is it to be so suddenly quenched in man, and man himself continue to exist? Shall the soul that lingers here still retaining its identity lose that which has chiefly formed for it a distinctive being? Or entering into a happier state of existence shall it be dispossessed of all that treasure of recollection and delight on which its joys and hopes have been so largely founded? These long remembrances of mutual beneficence and good, these intertwining and interwoven affections, and the unbounded and mingling love of their common offspring, shall these all perish and the soul itself yet be styled immortal? Or,—shall the first-gone spirit meet its arriving mate upon the border of that further shore, bless it with the radiant welcome of celestial companionship and guidance, and lead it on to higher virtue in a happier state, as it hath beamed upon it and in part educated it on Earth?–Doubt this not, my Heart! Doubt this not, my Soul!
WHERE IS THE SPIRIT-WORLD?
Perhaps the World of Spirits
Is the invisible air,
And every soul inherits
Its endless portion there,
When mortal lays its mortal by,
And puts on immortality.
Then round us and above us
Unseen, the souls of those
That hate us and that love us
In motion or repose,
To plan and work our good or ill,
As when on earth, are busy still.
For Enmity surviveth
This transitory life;
Spirit with spirit striveth
In an unending strife;
All roots of evil planted now
Eternally shall live and grow.
So friendship ever liveth
Immortal as the soul,
And purer pleasure giveth
As longer ages roll;
And hope and joy and inward peace
Forever heighten and increase!
Our homes and dwelling-places,
The country of our birth,
The old familiar faces
Endeared to us on earth,
And every source and scene of joy
Our spirits’ senses shall employ.
So shall our true affections,
To earthly objects given,
Form intimate connections
Between our world and heaven;
And all our long existence move
In an unbroken stream of love.
THE TYRANNY OF AFFECTION
Methinks those who preach up the dignity of human nature, and expatiate upon its original perfections, must look upon it through magic glasses: to some perceptions at least, it presents even in its best estate a picture of such abortive aims, such woful short-comings, such clouded brightness, that even in those better natures, where we feel sure that the sun of virtue does shine, the noxious vapors of human frailty, pride in all its various ramifications, selfishness under its many disguises, prejudice with its endless excuses, etc., etc., do so envelope it that we cannot hope to feel the warmth of its rays until some wholesome trial, some aptly-apportioned cross, clear away these paralyzing influences and force it into action.
What seems at the first glance freer from this dross than the love of man to man? the