Frailty

“ O Most compassionate Jesus, since by reason of thine unsearchable wisdom thou knowest the extent of human frailty more clearly and fully than I or any one can know it, I implore thee to have manifold compassion on my manifold frailty, and to vouchsafe to supply all my defects and shortcomings. ”

“ If it be otherwise, if we are not all frail as thou sayest, then let my brother die, unless he be but in the same case as others; if he alone possess and follow thee in that particular frailty to which thou has half confessed. ”

“ The fair, frail daughter of a godless house, the child whose glance had never been directed to anything higher than virtue and honor, to whom no principle more binding than that of morality had been taught, whose frailty had never been strengthened by any aid more powerful and enduring than the yearning fondness of the hearts that doted on her ”

“ In the latter it is chance but some present human frailty—an act of inattention on the part of some of the auditory—or a trait of affectation, or worse, vain-glory on that of the preacher—puts us by our best thoughts, disharmonizing the place and the occasion. ”

“ What sufferings, what sorrows should I have escaped!”
“Sufferings at your age, Rosario?”
“Aye, Father; Sufferings, which if known to you, would equally raise your anger and compassion! Sufferings, which form at once the torment and pleasure of my existence! Yet in this retreat my bosom would feel tranquil, were it not for the tortures of apprehension. Oh God! Oh God! how cruel is a life of fear!—Father! I have given up all; I have abandoned the world and its delights for ever: Nothing now remains, Nothing now has charms for me, but your friendship, but your affection. ”

“ O let me beg of you, that you wou'd hearken to my sorrowful Complaint, pity my Tears, and suffer not your Family to perish, but bear a Fathers Heart towards these, that are the Children of your Body. Or if you'll pity neither me nor your poor Children, pity your self: for you will suffer most in the Conclusion: You cannot think that you please God in living as you do: Can you take Comfort (think you) in remembering that you have ruin'd both your self and Family, by keeping of a Whore, when you shall lie upon your Dying Bed, and your poor Soul is just taking of its flight into Eternity? ”

“ I know her mind to be so tortured, and her body so convulsed by pain, that I have prayed to God to render her fit for Heaven, and take her from her sufferings. Imagine the weight of sorrow that crushed me to my knees with such a petition as that. I know all you have done, and yet I ask you now, in remembrance of the boyish love that bound you and my father together, to lessen her bodily anguish by the sacrifice of a little more; that she, nursed in the lap of luxury, may not pass from life with starvation as her companion. ”

“ And in after-years, when suffering or trial come over you, and when your thoughts fly as to a refuge to that shattered home, you will recall that stooping image of the father,—with his head bowed, and from time to time trembling convulsively with grief,—and feel that there remains yet by the household fires a heart of kindred love and of kindred sorrow! ”

“ O come, and joyful show thy spouse his heir, And what the blessings of maternal care!
TO A LADY AND HER CHILDREN, ON THE DEATH OF HER SON AND THEIR BROTHER. O’ERWHELMING sorrow now demands my song: From death the overwhelming sorrow sprung. What flowing tears? What hearts with grief opprest? What sighs on sighs heave the fond parent’s breast? The brother weeps, the hapless sisters join Th’ increasing woe, and swell the crystal brine; The poor, who once his gen’rous bounty fed, Droop, and bewail their benefactor dead. ”

“ Of a new sorrow and gloom,
And when his soul to comfort them is fain
Finds his voice mute, his form unknown, unseen,
And thinks with irrepressible pain
Of all the happy days which late have been,
And feels his new life's inmost chambers stirred
If only of his own, he might be seen or heard;
Then if, at length,
The father's yearning and overburdened soul
Burst into shape and voice which scorn control
Of its despairing strength,—
Ah Heaven! ah pity for the present dread
Which strikes the old affection, dull and dead! ”

“ By the love within their own.”
But the Voice cried:- “Once remember
You devoted soul and mind
To the welfare of your brethren,
And the service of your kind.
Now, what sorrow can you comfort?
You, who lie in helpless pain,
With an impotent compassion
Fretting out your life in vain.”
“Nay;” and then the gentle answer
Rose more loud, and full, and clear:
“For the sake of all my brethren
I thank God that I am here!
Poor had been my Life’s best efforts,
Now I waste no thought or breath—
For the prayer of those who suffer
Has the strength of Love and Death.” ”

“ How mournful would be the history of these pages, could I write of that solemn under-current of grief that has swept through my heart, while each word has fallen, as it were, mechanically from my pen. I have written in a dream; my mind has been at work while my soul dwelt wholly with another. Between every sentence fear, and grief, and keen anxiety have broken up, known only to myself, and leaving no imprint on the page which my hand was tracing. My brother, my noble young brother, so good, so strong, once so full of hopeful life! ”

“ My father dying when I was but ten years old left me, and a brother two years younger than myself, to the care of my mother, a woman of birth and education, whose prudence or virtue he had no reason to distrust. She felt, for some time, all the sorrow which nature calls forth, upon the final separation of persons dear to one another ”

“ There were days when the battle for existence threatened to overweigh and submerge them; days when from morning till night their work seemed possessed by evil demons, and everything went wrong; days when despair tugged at their hearts, and the old happy life forced itself in upon their thoughts with clamorous persistence. And ah! how they felt the sorrow of their father’s helplessness, the loss of his companionship causing an ache that nothing could assuage! ”

“ If there are sufferings which, however dreadful in their endurance, are yet susceptible of amelioration, the sorrow which a parent’s loss awakens is not among the number; other ties may be replaced, other affections may be restored, but when death breaks the bond of filial love, nature, honouring the most sacred of her feelings, forbids a sentiment less pure, less strong, succeeding to it; and though the tear which sorrow sheds upon the parent’s grave may be dried by time, the loss which bids that tear to flow can never be replaced by human tenderness or human power. ”

“ Freed from a world of sin, and snares, and pain,
Why would you wish your daughter back again?
No—bow resigned; let hope your grief control,
And check the rising tumult of the soul.
Calm in the prosperous and adverse day,
Adore tho God who gives and takes away ”

“ I have lost the worthiest and most affectionate parents, brothers, and sisters, such as few ever had; and however my heart might be pierced with sorrow, it was still more deeply pierced with a conviction of my own past impiety and ingratitude; and under all this affliction, I wept silently and alone—and my outcry or lamentation was never heard by mortal. ”

“ Unutterable grief dwelt upon her sweet young face, which also was pale and wan from the sickness through which she had passed. An awful feeling shot through me. My first question was, “Is your mother on shore?”
She looked at me for a moment in solemn silence, and, slowly raising her hand, pointed upward.
“Your brother?” I gasped.
She turned her head away. I was silent. They were dead, then. O God! and this child—what had she not been suffering? My mind at once, in its agony of sympathy with her, burst through the clouds which sickness had thrown around it. “Poor child!” I said. ”

“ I beseech you remember, that you are not only sowing the seeds of disease and premature death, which will nip all your pleasures in the bud, but which must also yield you a harvest of sorrows too many to number and too aggravated to endure—that you are bringing down not only your own soul with sorrow to an untimely, grave, but, in case you become mothers, your children also with you or before you into their graves. ”

“ But the sorrows of the poor, who have no outward appliances to soothe--the sorrows of the aged, with whom life at best is but a wintry day, and who can look for no after-growth of joy--the sorrows of a widow, aged, solitary, destitute, mourning over an only son, the last solace of her years,--these are indeed sorrows which make us feel the impotency of consolation. ”

“ Griefs and the Cares have set their couches down–
The vengeful Cares. There pale Diseases dwell,
Sad Eld and Fear and loathsome Poverty
And Hunger, that bad counsellor,–dire shapes–
And Death and Toil, and Sleep brother of Death
And soul-corrupting joys. ”

“ Could I believe that grief for the dead, and not sorrow for the conduct of the living, moved her thus, I should be happy. Then I could offer consolation and sympathy; but now, if I saw her, what could I say? Pity, sorrow for her grief, would be but idle words, which she would spurn with contempt,—and she would be right. ”

“ What gnawing grief, what hidden sorrows have you not been called upon to endure, from the death of your mother to the birth of your child! Who would ever believe such ills could reach one so envied, so admired, and so calculated to enjoy and impart happiness to others?"
"Oh, my lord, there are some sorrows so deep, so unapproachable, that for worlds we would not even have them suspected; and the severest increase of suffering would arise from the very doubt of our being the enviable creatures we are believed to be." ”

“ My infant-sufferer found relief;
And, in the pilfer'd treasure pleased,
Smiled on my guilt, and hush'd my grief.
But I have griefs of other kind,
Troubles and sorrows more severe;
Give me to ease my tortured mind,
30 Lend to my woes a patient ear;
And let me—if I may not find
A friend to help—find one to hear.
Yet nameless let me plead—my name
Would only wake the cry of scorn;
A child of sin, conceived in shame,
Brought forth in wo, to misery born. ”

“ Deep and bitter is the grief that shrinks from words, even with those the most loved and trusted: and what a world of unspoken sorrow was in the soul of both mother and son as they crossed the threshold! ”

“ It pains them—it agonises them—to put the question, "What is to become of me when I die?" And the more pain the question gives them, the more they fly to the world, and occupy their minds with its society, its amusements, and even its dissipation and debaucheries, in order to banish care and snatch a fleeting joy. O my brother, if you so act, from my soul I feel for you and pity you! ”

“ We both have entered sorrow's door;
Grief comes alike to you and me,
So we are of one family."
The richest nabob that I meet,
The poorest delver that I see,
Youth and old age upon the street,
Are one and all the same to me.
No heart that beats, but has its grief;
Nor wealth, nor youth, gives full relief;
And through the tears that sometimes fall
I claim relationship to all. ”

“ If you should wed, may a father's curse
⁠Be your swift and sure undoing.
“My curse shall feed on your fields of corn,
⁠On your roof-tree make its nesting,
Your wife shall wish your child unborn
⁠As he pines on her sore heart resting.”
Now when this cruel oath he said
⁠The youth did chide him, crying,
“Since I have neither field nor bed
⁠Your curse shall fall to dying. ”

“ The parting with my wife and my poor children hath often been to me as the pulling of my flesh from my bones, especially my poor blind child who lay nearer my heart than all I had besides. Poor child, thought I, what sorrow art thou like to have for thy portion in this world! ”

“ If it may mitigate that killing grief,
Which your so solitary life too much
Has nourish'd in you. Cousin, feed it not:
'Tis a disease that will in time consume you.
I have already given the best advice,
That my poor knowledge will afford, to ease
Your troubled thoughts. If time, which Heaven allows
To cure all griefs, should not have power to do it:
If death of father, mother, husband, wife,
Should be lamented still, the world would wear
Nothing but black: sorrow alone would reign
In every family that lives, and bring
[Pg 69] Upon poor mortals a perpetual night. ”

“ To open our hearts to those we know will commiserate our sorrows is the sweetest consolation those sorrows can receive; to you, then, madam, I divulge mine, sure at least of pity. At the time I first had the happiness of seeing you, the little credit my father had was exhausted, and his inability to pay being well known, he was arrested one evening as he sat by the bedside of my almost expiring mother! ”

“ Patient, and upheld by strong affection to the last, she died a widow of some three weeks’ date, leaving to her father’s care two orphans; one a son of ten or twelve years old; the other a girl—such another infant child—the same in helplessness, in age, in form, in feature—as she had been herself when her young mother died.
‘The elder brother, grandfather to these two children, was now a broken man; crushed and borne down, less by the weight of years than by the heavy hand of sorrow. ”

“ And is the image of our frail mortality for ever present with you, to throw a damp on your gayest hours, and poison even those joys which love inspires? Consider rather, that if life be frail, if youth be transitory, we should well employ the present moment, and lose no part of so perishable an existence. ”

“ Who bind the widow's heart, which breaking heals no more?
Frail as a flower, beneath the blast of pain,
How impotent and vain
Is Man, to boast him of his zephyr's breath,
Man, whose whole race of life is on the verge of death! ”