Happy ending

“ Often the story ends as it should. They get well and marry and live happy ever afterward. Sometimes, of course, it ends sadly. But nearly always love brings its compensation of joy, and nearly all who have ever lived out here keep afterward [127] in their hearts an unfading flower of romance. ”

“ What is suspense in love but a constant drawing upon an unfailing hope?—a submission to the terrible scourging of passion, while passion is yet happy, and the disenchantment of reality has not set in. The constant putting forth of strength and longing, called suspense, is surely, to the human soul, as fragrance to the flower that breathes it forth. ”

“ I am a man of the educated class: I am just as much at home, I may say, with Prince Kanitelin as I am with you here now. But my habits are simple, and I want a girl who is not too much a fine lady. Above all, she must have respect for me and feel that I have made her happiness. ”

“ All, all seems dull and dreary to the eye,
When love is lost.
Love lends to life its grandeur and its might,
Love goes, and leaves behind it gloom and blight.
Like ghosts of time the pallid hours drag by,
And grief's one happy thought is that we die.
Ah! what can recompense us for its flight,
When love is lost.
IV.
Life is a ponderous lesson book, and Fate
The teacher. When I came to love's fair leaf
My teacher turned the page and bade me wait.
"Learn first," she said, "love's grief";
And o'er and o'er through many a long to-morrow
She kept me conning that sad page of sorrow. ”

“ Was it true that this long love-chase over land and sea was at its ending? Joy is always a giant surprise, — success a disappointment among the appointed failures. Was this grim dwarf to be a conjurer of happiness? ”

“ My hopes were never so definite, but my eye was constantly allured to that distant blue range, and I would sit, lost in fancies, till tears fell on my cheek. I loved this sadness; but only in later years, when the realities of life had taught me moderation, did the passionate emotions excited by seeing them again teach how glorious were the hopes that swelled my heart while gazing on them in those early days.
‘Melancholy attends on the best joys of a merely ideal life, else I should call most happy the hours in the garden, the hours in the book closet. ”

“ When that life should come to which I secretly looked forward,—when my soul should bound into a more radiant atmosphere, where the clouds, if any were, should be all gold- and silver-tinted, and where my sorrows, love-colored, were to be sweeter than other people's joys,—in that life, there would be moments of sweet abandonment to the simple sense of happiness. ”

“ Were they tears of joy?--Who can tell?--Who can say where joy begins and sorrow ends? They are so wonderfully interwoven in the human heart; they are the warp and the woof, and happy is he who weaves them into a firm web. The tear which is born of sorrow has as much its woof of hope as the tear of joy its woof of fear. The past anguish about my father and the fear as to his future wove themselves into my mother's joyful feeling of thankfulness, and the tears which fell were not tears of pure joy. Does any tear of pure joy ever fall on this earth? ”

“ Send thy gladness, laughing rover,
All my sorrows o'er and over,
Till the strains of happy pleasure
Mingle in melodious measure;
It may give a transient glee
To condemn thy ways and sever,
But the sweets of melody
Thou wilt murmur on forever.
Bind my heart in silken chaining,
Till from thee is none remaining;
Clothe my soul in glad completeness
Of thy happiness and sweetness;
When the times are true, the soul
May not hunger for thy gladness,
But when surging sorrows roll
Thou alone shall banish sadness. ”

“ No, there was no love without suffering, he thought; even happy love had its thrills and tremors of doubt, its hours of anticipatory fears. A little while ago and his own life had stretched before him, bright, hopeful and full of enjoyment, and then a cloud had blotted out all the goodly land of promise, and he had been left a poor prisoner of hope on the dim borders, led in paths that he truly had not known—mysterious paths of suffering and patience. ”

“ The happy life is changed to one of suffering and sorrow. The few months of happiness I enjoyed with the one I loved above all others was abruptly closed—taken from me—for ever—it was cruel, it was dreadful. ”

“ That is because you are heartsick and—and tired, as you say. With one sad story ended you are afraid to begin another—a sequel—feeling it would be equally sad. But why should it be? Isn't the joy or sorrow equally divided in life? ”

“ To say that these wedded lovers were very happy, would scarcely express the delirium of pure joy in which they had dreamed away their days and nights for the last few weeks—joy that both were too young and untried to know could not last for ever, could not indeed even last long—joy so elevated in its insanity as almost to tempt some thunderbolt of malignant fate to fall upon it with destroying force, even as the highly rarefied air sometimes draws on the whirlwind and the storm. ”

“ My bliss was more rapid than the progress of a sunbeam on a mountain, which discloses its glades & woods, and then leaves it dark & blank; to my happiness followed madness and agony, closed by despair.
This was the drama of my life which I have now depicted upon paper. During three months I have been employed in this task. The memory of sorrow has brought tears; the memory of happiness a warm glow the lively shadow of that joy. Now my tears are dried; the glow has faded from my cheeks, and with a few words of farewell to you, Woodville, I close my work: the last that I shall perform. ”

“ He said, ‘You will have a very great sorrow, which will shake your faith in man: then you will have another even greater sorrow, which will come to you through an old and trusted servant: you will marry late in life a king among men, and the close of your existence will be cloudlessly happy.’ All the first part of the prophecy has come true—the breaking off of her first engagement; the terrible murder of her father by his servant; her marriage with Sir James Hills; all that remains now is happiness. ”

“ Will you, indeed, share all my troubles and sorrows, nor deem them, when the first full joy of love is past, unworthy of your attention—your cares, too great to admit of such trifles, claiming your consideration? If you will, and also let me share all your joys and griefs in perfect sympathy and love, then—then my dream of happiness will be fulfilled; but if, in years to come," she continued, with suppressed emotion, "you should change, and a harshness or indifference take the place of sympathy and love, Oh I would wish to die before that day!" ”

“ She closed her eyes, yielding for one breathless instant to the passion of his embrace. Her dream and her longing melted swiftly into realisation, and she told herself that the agony of joy was sharper than that of grief. This was like nothing that she had imagined, and she felt an impulse to fly back into the uncertainty that she had left—to gain time in which to prepare for the happiness which she told herself was hers. ”

“ Is it so contemptible, if a few steps from the grave we once more look back on life, and there perceive a happiness which would render it loveable and worth having if only it were not too late, and if then one grows distracted with misery and longing, and with rage against fate? If though dying one longs to press to one's heart the dear one who is denied to us, and breathe our last breath on her lips? ”

“ Joy itself must have an ending, Youth is only born to fade,
And alone Love is immortal, faithful Love can never die—
Death's dark gates for him are open. Death himself must let him by.’
Then my heart grew chill, for nigh me once again I heard that call:
‘On! on! Time can never linger; Death, the king, is end of all.’
So along the path we wandered, pausing oft for sweet caress,
Till my heart felt overflowing with its wealth of happiness;
But lo! on the path before us briars mingled with the moss ”

“ Was the next moment hidden on his bosom.
But there was happiness even in that farewell,
Affection and deep confidence,
Tenderness, hope—for Love lights Hope,—and tears,
Delicious tears! the heart's own dew. ”

“ Her happy soul now feels to be sublime.
[Pg 172] How fair upon the human face appears
A kindling smile! how idle all our tears!
Short-sighted still the moisten'd eyes of sorrow:
To-day our woes can never end,
Think we!—returns a long-lost friend,
And we are blest to-morrow.
Her anguish, and her wish to die,
Now seem like worst impiety,
For many a year she hopeth now to live;
And God, who sees the inmost breast,
The vain repining of the sore-distrest,
In mercy will forgive. ”

“ At that time of bitterness, how sad was the revelation that came up from the very depths of my soul, teaching me a truth fraught with suffering—that affection is life itself! I felt that it was my destiny never to be cheered by its blessed light and warmth. Months passed away, and I closed up my heart; a coldness, a stoic apathy came over me, which was sometimes broken by a slight thing; the flood-gates of feeling gave way, and I wept with a passionate sorrow—over my own sinfulness—over my own lonely heart, without one joy to shed a glow on its rude desolation. ”

“ There is nothing truer, more intensely pathetic, in all literature, than this frightful pang of evil, not real, but first imagined; this frightful nightmare vision of the end coming when reality is still happy. Have we not all of us at one time felt the horrible shudder of that sudden perception that happiness must end; that the beloved, the living, must die ”

“ Happiness has no history, and the story-tellers of all lands have understood this so well that the words, "They are happy," are the end of every love tale. ”

“ In the final moment of a life which is going out physical suffering no longer counts. The name of the loved one embodies all the vanishing mirage of the future, the end of a too beautiful [83] dream, the memories of a happy past ... of a happy past, for the bad times are forgotten. ”

“ A mind unsettled by guilt and sorrow; spirits which have lost all relish for felicity; a blemished, if not a ruined reputation, a faded person, and an exhausted heart—exhausted of almost every sentiment but that so fatally predominant; which now forces me to blot my paper with tears, as I write this last farewel!
'Farewel! most beloved Fitz-Edward!—Ah! try if it be possible to be happy! ”

“ Who that truly entered into them could help being thrilled with the deepest grief? What a sacrifice, to make himself the bleeding example of his teachings! What a love, which devotes itself to secure the happiness of a world! When I read the history of the passion, it seems as if I had a thousand hearts, so keenly, so painfully, do I feel the death-agony of the One Heart that bore in itself the sorrows of all, suffered for all, bled for all, loved all,--even those who betrayed it,--and was understood and valued by so few. ”

“ A guiltless ending such as might be implied today could not be allowed, and the lovers whose course we have followed with a bit of impatience must accept the scraps of happiness that their world could accept. ”

“ The light'ning, the fierce wind, and trampling waves.
Farewell, farewell the Heart that lives alone,
Hous'd in a dream, at distance from the Kind!
Such happiness, wherever it be known,
Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind.
But welcome fortitude, and patient chear,
And frequent sights of what is to be born!
Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.—
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn. ”

“ But I to cease from these thoughts; for we to face our life brave and wise, and to take both the sorrow and the joy unto our developing, and to hold up the face with courage when that Grief doth come anigh; and to see that we grow not to bitterness, but unto sweet wholesomeness. And there to be Joy again, and we then the better abled to have that delight into our hearts; for how shall Joy ever to come truly again to that heart which bitterness hath made a place for the abode of sorrow. ”

“ It had seemed meet that their lives should end, once havíng reached the deepest joy that life could hold;—joy taken from the very jaws of the grave;—joy burning through the frozen chillness of despair. ”

“ Thou'lt find her yet in Heaven!
GO, THEN—'TIS VAIN. (SICILIAN AIR.) Go, then—'tis vain to hover
Thus round a hope that's dead;
At length my dream is over;
'Twas sweet—'twas false—'tis fled!
Farewell! since naught it moves thee,
Such truth as mine to see—
Some one, who far less loves thee,
Perhaps more blest will be.
Farewell, sweet eyes, whose brightness
New life around me shed;
Farewell, false heart, whose lightness
Now leaves me death instead.
Go, now, those charms surrender
To some new lover's sigh—
One who, tho' far less tender,
May be more blest than I. ”

“ Shall I go on?’
165 ‘Go on, go on, say everything you know!’
‘The cards said too that your life will not be a happy one. You will never love with your heart, because your heart is cold and dull, and you will cause great sorrow to those who love you. You will never marry; you will die a bachelor. There will be no great joys in your life, but much weariness and depression.... There will come a time when you will want to put an end to your life.... ”

“ How happy were the world, if, with the remembrance of love and glory lost, the recollection of pleasures would likewise be consumed forever! But worst and saddest grief of all is to find that at no time is this fantastic victory of love transitory, for always it is repeated in remembrance. ”

“ Your great heart be a fire burned out.—Ah, then,
What shall remain for me beneath the skies
Of glad, or good, or beautiful, or wise,
That can relume and thrill my life again?
This shall remain, a love that cannot fail,
A life that joys in your great joy, yet grieves
In memory of sweet days fled too soon. ”