Douceur

“ How often, when the rage and tumult of my senses had subsided, after the melting flow, have I, in a tender meditation, asked myself cooly the question, if it was in nature for any of its creatures to be so happy as I was? Or, what were all fears of the consequence, put in the scale of one night’s enjoyment, of any thing so transcendently the taste of my eyes and heart, as that delicious, fond, matchless youth. ”

“ I ask, "Holds earth or sin, or woe?"
My heart replies, "I do not know."
Nay! all we know, or feel, my heart,
Today is joy undimmed, complete;
In tears or pain we have no part;
The act of breathing is so sweet,
We care no higher joy to name. ”

“ Everything is beautiful, and all nature is glad and rejoicing. Arise, my soul, and be thou glad likewise. Cast off thy gloomy fears. The God who made all the beautiful things by which thou art surrounded is not unmindful of thee. Oh, wondrous condescension! God is not forgetful of me. He gazes upon me with an eye of compassion; he pities my distress and my weakness. Amazing love! Oh, that I were more worthy of it; Oh, that I loved him as fervently as I ought! But my heart is callous, and I am nothing but a poor, cold, vile and helpless sinner: nothing but sin dwells hi my heart. ”

“ In youth, while the heart is tender, and sensibility quick and lively, what an exquisite delight the mind is capable of enjoying, by penetrating through visible objects and the beauty of temporal things, to the contemplation of that wisdom, power and goodness, which are manifest through the medium of these outward forms! If the fragrance of the rose can so gratefully delight the sense, how much greater is the pleasure to the rational mind which flows from the consideration of that wisdom and goodness which gave this power to the rose, and this capacity to sense! ”

“ Thus, when pleasure begins from its sweetness to cloy, And the warm heart grows rank like a soil over ripe, We must turn from the earth for some promise of joy, And look up to heaven for a holier type. ”

“ But when we would penetrate into his spirit, meditate on those things on which he meditates, accompany him even unto the brink of eternity, fluctuate with him on the ghastly sea of despair, soar with him into the purest and serenest regions of human thought, feel with him the curse of beholding iniquity, and the troubled delight of thinking on innocence, and gentleness, and beauty ”

“ In the very passion of delight that pours like wine through the veins is a solemn outfall—in the very deliciousness of joy an intensity that is almost pain. It is all so solemn and so grand, so noble and so loving, surely we cannot be less than what we live in! ”

“ Blessing be shed upon thine inmost heart,
Joy, from kind looks, blue skies, and flowery sod,
For that pure voice of thoughtful wisdom sent
Forth from thy cell, in sweetness eloquent
Of love to man, and quenchless trust in God! ”

“ There is a celestial calm—an elevated joy, in the trance of mind; it is a pure and quiet sense of nobler being. There is a sweet serenity—a bliss divine, in the simple and noiseless expressions of virtuous esteem and friendship. ”

“ Keep the heart glad with natural devotion.
'Tis a true, sweet lesson; for, in life's actual harvest,
Much we need the flowers that mingle with our labours.
Pleasures, pure and simple, recall us to their Giver;
For ever, in its joy, does the full heart think of Heaven. ”

“ While Beauty's deeply-pictured smiles impart
A pang more dear than pleasure to the heart—
Warm as thy sighs shall flow the Lesbian strain,
And plead in Beauty's ear, nor plead in vain.
"Or wilt thou Orphean hymns more sacred deem,
And steep thy song in Mercy's mellow stream ;
To pensive drops the radiant eye beguile—
For Beauty's tears are lovelier than her smile ”

“ Fly from the heartless pleasures of the world,
Those passing lights, that dazzle to deceive!
Seek that bright spot of blessedness, thy home—
All that this life can give of pure and dear—
Changeless affection, kindness still the same,
The ear that listens but to soothe thy grief—
That never tedious thinks thy tale of joy ”

“ That is, in the sweetness of our love; not only in that sweetness of ordinary union, but also in that which flows from active and affective love, whether in the will by an act of affection, or outwardly in good works which tend to the service of the Beloved. For love, as I have said, where it is firmly rooted, ever runs after those joys and delights which are the acts of exterior and interior love. All this the soul does that it may be made like to the Beloved. ”

“ I awake from dreams of you to feel your presence still with me; and my first emotion is gratitude to God for having given me this happiness. Forgive me, beloved father! that I can be so content without you! The bonds of nature are weakened, when an absorbing emotion fills the heart. The time may come when nature will be avenged. Ah, it cannot be wrong to love as I do. God has opened this fountain in the desert of life, as a solace for all its evils. Ah, how can those who love be sufficiently grateful to God? Every hour should be an act of adoration and praise. ”

“ My soul within me seemed to melt
In sweet delirious pain.
"Sweet is the stolen draught," she said;
"Hath sweetness stint or measure?
Pleasant the secret hoard of bread;
What bars us from our pleasure?" ”

“ Teach us, we beseech Thee, how to cleanse and purify, how to illumine and adorn, how to beautify and sanctify our hearts and souls that Thou mayest deign to enter them. All the world's charm of light and colour and fragrance we would gather into our hearts that Thou, our best Beloved, mayest accept them as the favourite retreats of Thy love. ”

“ Keep a rein upon all your passions—upon covetousness, above all; for once that has you within its clutch, farewell for ever to the light heart and the sleep that comes unbidden, to the open eye that drinks in delight from the beauty and freshness and infinite variety of nature, to the unclouded mind that judges justly and serenely of men and things. ”

“ How transporting and ineffable are the joys of convalescence!—the calm of mind—the voluptuous langour—the unrebuked abandonment to mere pleasurable sensation—the delight that every natural object imparts, fill those hours with a dream-like, faint ecstasy, more dear to memory than tumultuous joy. ”

“ If ever happiness hath lodged with man,
That day consummate happiness was mine,
Wide-spreading, steady, calm, contemplative.
The sun was set, or setting, when I left
Our cottage door, and evening soon brought on
A sober hour, not winning or serene,
For cold and raw the air was, and untuned;
But as a face we love is sweetest then
When sorrow damps it, or, whatever look
It chance to wear, is sweetest if the heart
Have fulness in herself ”

“ A few words, however, in explanation. That pleasure which is at once the most pure, the most elevating, and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the Beautiful. In the contemplation of Beauty we alone find it possible to attain that pleasurable elevation, or excitement, of the soul, which we recognize as the Poetic Sentiment, and which is so easily distinguished from Truth, which is the satisfaction of the Reason, or from Passion, which is the excitement of the heart. ”

“ Thy swiftness, slimness, shyness, simpleness,
That set the old folk sighing for the rare
Red rose of Joy thy careless days possess.
. . . And when at last, with sad, indifferent face,
I walk in narrow pathways patiently;
Forgetful of thy beauty, and thy truth,
Thy ringing laughter, thy rebellious grace . . .
When fair Love turns his face away from me . . . ”

“ Live, toil, rise for his sake not less than your own. If you knew how this heart beats as I write to you, if you could conceive what comfort I take for him from my confidence in you, you would feel a new spirit—my spirit—my mother-spirit of love, and forethought, and vigilance, enter into you while you read. ”

“ This sweetness, then, and this interior pleasure which we are describing, and which these progressives find and experience in their spirits so easily and so abundantly, is communicated to them in much greater abundance than aforetime, overflowing into their senses more than was usual previously to this purgation of sense; for, inasmuch as the sense is now purer, it can more easily feel the pleasures of the spirit after its manner. ”

“ To project one's soul into some gracious form, and let it tarry there for a moment; to hear one's own intellectual views echoed back to one with all the added music of passion and youth; to convey one's temperament into another as though it were a subtle fluid or a strange perfume: there was a real joy in that—perhaps the most satisfying joy left to us in an age so limited and vulgar as our own, an age grossly carnal in its pleasures, and grossly common in its aims.... ”

“ But whoever yet rejected the blessing for which his soul thirsted?—And in the scale of human felicities, if there is one in which all others is summed up—above all others supremely elevated—it is the consciousness of having awakened the first sentiment of the sweetest, the sublimest of all passions, in the bosom of youth, genius, and sensibility. ”

“ Give me, O gracious Saviour, speedy and efficacious feelings of thy divine succour and comfort, who, according to the accustomed sweetness of thy tender heart, art wont to grant the requests of them who really fear and love thee, even to their own soul’s desire and satisfaction. ”

“ They bring comfort, but also they bring tears into the eyes and pain into the heart. The message of a tender soul—what does it bring but ineffable comfort to the heart? You do not feel that it is a message, you do not feel it to be a divinely beautiful thing. ”

“ And the spirit which animates him is essentially the spirit of delight: delight in the beauty of nature and the vividness of sensation, delight in the charm of fable and romance, in the thoughts of friendship and affection, in anticipations of the future, and in the exercise of the art itself which expresses and communicates all these joys. ”

“ Am not I born for the glittering throng?
Treading on roses with delicate feet,
Is not a life a perpetual treat?
Can we be more than delighted and blest?
Pleasure is beautiful—is it the best?
Highest and best that our nature can know? ”

“ Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart
Awake to Love and Beauty ! and sometimes
'Tis well to be bereft of promis'd good,
That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
With lively joy the joys we cannot share. ”

“ They portray every gentle emotion of the heart, which vents itself in friendship and benevolence, and were believed to preside over those qualities which constitute grace, modesty, unconscious beauty, gentleness, kindliness, innocent joy, purity of mind and body, and eternal youth. ”

“ Viewing all these wondrous odes together, the predominant quality which we trace in them is an extreme susceptibility to delight, close-linked with afterthought—pleasure with pang—or that poignant sense of ultimates, a sense delicious and harrowing, which clasps the joy in sadness, and feasts upon the very sadness in joy. ”

“ Does his heart thrill with a deeper pleasure in doing good? Can his soul writhe in more bitter agony under the consciousness of evil or wrong? Is the sunshine more glorious, the air more quiet, the sounds of harmony more soothing, the perfume of flowers [Pg 113] more exquisite, or forms of beauty more soul-satisfying to his senses, than to hers? ”

“ Has any one—with any heart—ever received such a package? To such a one there is no need to tell the glow of pleasure, the rush of affection and joy, which filled Faith's heart and her face; to anybody else it's no use. ”

“ On this happy day the soul not only ceases from its anxieties and loving complaints, but is, moreover, adorned with all grace, entering into a state of peace and delight, and of the sweetness of love, as it appears from these stanzas, in which it does nothing else but recount and praise the magnificence of the Beloved, which it recognizes in Him, and enjoys in the union of the betrothal. ”

“ For the sweetness of Him in this degree is so comforting, and lasting in His love, so burning and gladdening, that he or she who is in this degree can as well feel the fire of love burning in their soul, as thou canst feel thy finger burn if thou puttest it in the fire. ”

“ There are still loves and affections, sympathies and regards, associations and memories, and all the linked sweetness of that strange harmonious whole, where the spirit and the matter, the soul and the body, blended in mysterious union, act on each other, and reciprocate, by every sense and every perception, new sources of pain or of delight. ”

“ When to this simple sensuous pleasure is added the enchantment of poetic images, lovely and veiled and dimly understood, then the delight grows sweeter and keener, the child’s soul flowers into a conscious love of poetry, and one lifelong source of happiness is gained. ”

“ The deep, unswerving confidence of young love, what a blessed thing it is! Heart answers to heart without an unequal throb. The world around is bright and beautiful: the atmosphere is filled with spring's most delicious perfumes. ”

“ Every comfort, no kind of vexation, consideration, a commodious and beautiful house, a well-ordered, pleasant, and honourable life independent of the caprices which formerly troubled me, the impossibility of meeting ungrateful people, of seeing or hearing anything which recalls them, the opportunity of doing good—all this renders my life infinitely sweet. ”

“ There were moments when her presence filled him with a heavenly satisfaction, when he understood that divine fusion of spirit with spirit in its entirety, when love overcame pride, and he was humble enough to go to her in his poverty. ”

“ Humility, patience, meekness, benignity, bearing one another's burden, condescension, softness of heart, cheerfulness, cordiality, compassion, forgiving injuries, simplicity, candour—all, in short of that sort of little virtues. They, like unobtrusive violets, love the shade ”