Rupture

“ An aneurysm may prove _fatal_ by exerting pressure on important structures, by causing syncope, by rupture, or from the occurrence of suppuration. _Pressure_ symptoms are usually most serious from aneurysms situated in the neck, thorax, or skull. Sudden fatal _syncope_ is not infrequent in cases of aneurysm of the thoracic aorta. ”

“ The shivered surge; when rising griefs deform
Thy peaceful breast, hie to yon steep, and think,—
When thou dost mark the melancholy tide
Beneath thee, and the storm careering wide,—
Tossed on the surge of life how many sink! [Pg 24]
And if thy cheek with one kind tear be wet,
And if thy heart be smitten, when the cry
Of danger and of death is heard more nigh,
Oh, learn thy private sorrows to forget;
Intent, when hardest beats the storm, to save
One who, like thee, has suffered from the wave. ”

“ After every storm, though the sky may be clearer, the earth upon which it fell has suffered some loss which is a loss for ever. Begin, then, by conciliation and forbearance. Look past the external, which may seem at times too exacting or imperative, and see only the true heart pulsing beneath—the true, brave heart, that would give to every muscle the strength of steel for your protection if danger threatened. Can you not be satisfied with knowing that you are loved—deeply, truly, tenderly? ”

“ For the autumn leaves have covered
And hid the sodden ground.
[Pg 128]
THERE IS A RIFT IN THE CLOUDS.
Though life may be gloomy,
And dark be thy way,
No light in thy pathway,
Not even one ray.
Look up to the heavens;
There’s a rift in the clouds.
Though life may be warfare,
Thy heart have no peace,
Fear not, thou wilt conquer,
Thy heart have surcease.
Look upward, not downward,
There’s a rift in the clouds.
Though friends may prove faithless,
And false unto thee;
There may be a reason
That thou dost not see.
Have charity always,
[Pg 129] And see rift in the clouds. ”

“ That storm will some day burst upon you, you cursed off-scourings, and it will disperse you to the ends of the earth, you scabs on the body of the people—the people from whom you, yourselves are descended. ”

“ Waiting in meekness till the storm be pass'd,
Assured an hour of peace will come at last;
That there will be for thee a calm bright day,
When the dark clouds are gathered away.
How canst thou ever sorrow's emblem be? ”

“ The storm rages over the earth, rends the veil, bursts the false temple. The world groans; and the Lord himself, touched even in his unapproachable divinity, extends his arms to his beloved Son to receive him to his heart. ”

“ It is not so much the sighing of the blast as that pause, as Gray expresses it, "when the gust is recollecting itself," that thrills us, and is infinitely grander than the importunate howlings of the storm. ”

“ On the instant there came a crackling, tearing sound—a heaving roll—a splintering crash and uproar. The man aloft was seen to make a flying leap—or was it only a hurled fragment of the falling chimney?—and white dust rose in a fog once more and blotted out all the tragedy that might be enacting behind it. ”

“ Every one of these breaks in your lifeline shows a moment when you stood face to face with death. Ah, señor, in all my experience I have never seen such an adventurous palm.... You have stood elbow to elbow with death, and yet those little squares about the breaks show a guiding spirit of protection. ”

“ Once break roughly upon the affections, or even the fancied affections of such a soul, and you breed a tornado of maddened action—a whirlwind of fire that hisses and sends out jets of wild, impulsive combustion that make the bystanders—even those most friendly—stand aloof until the storm is past. ”

“ The gale outside was like a living immensity, a vast soul raging with world-suffering, thousand-voiced and thousand-winged, and under its raging agony, which filled all the air above the land, the house that contained the life of them all was small as some tiny casket.... ”

“ When, as yesterday, every sixteen minutes a tremendous jarring crash tells you that a shell has fallen somewhere in the city,—and the concussion is so great that it always sounds as if it had fallen in the next block!—you see people turn their heads as they walk, staring in the direction of the explosion ”

“ Upon all ordinary things, breakage comes as the climax of disaster; upon a select few, breakage comes as the climax of destiny. The fountain-pen that I hold in my hand—the pen with which, without so much as a change of nib, all my books have been written—will lie broken before me one of these days. ”

“ A terrible blow, as with a whip, an uproar, a shattering blow. The earth trembled and torn-off leaves whirled through the air. Snatching for air, and holding on with both hands to the support of the cross, so as not to be swept away. ”

“ With bruising shall the earth be broken, with commotion shall she be moved, with tossing shall she be shaken like a drunken man, and she shall be taken away as if she were a pavilion of one night's pitching, and her iniquities shall hang heavy upon her, and she shall fall down, and shall not attempt to rise again. ”

“ Her head, of the pure classical mould, is bent forward, as if weighed down by the shock, and there is a heavy drooping in the mouth and eyelids, that denotes a sudden and sickening agony. It is not a violent, passionate grief, but a deep and almost paralyzing emotion—a shock from which the soul will finally rebound, strengthened to make the sacrifice. ”

“ The heart-wreck caused by the sudden departure of so many can be open only to one eye, and that the All-Seeing. Think of one family of fourteen all dead except one, and that the wife and mother, and she the witness of their drowning. ”

“ The night with every passing moment seemed yawning wider and wider before him in a chasm that threatened ruin, and disaster, and the wreckage of everything that in life was worth the living, and—no,’ Not yet! ”

“ It is like seeking the dead and wounded on the battlefield, or the missing, the maimed or the dead after an earthquake, or some devouring tempest or flood—so much alike, at least in their results, are the eruptions of the elements and the fierce, uncontrolled passions of man. ”

“ As you remember, all our efforts were in vain; the unspeakable occurred, and [301] wreck, death, and disaster met my eyes when, after a period of blank darkness, I rose from the ground where I had been hurled by the force of that dynamite explosion. Amid this wreck, in face of this death, I plunged in my search for her, and, as I believed, found her. A loving husband cannot be deceived in his wife's clothes, and the fragments I handled told their tale, as I thought, only too well. ”

“ All is there disorder and accident, or seems so; sudden starts of its shattered beds hither and thither; ugly struggles of unexpected strength from under the ground; fallen fragments, toppling one over another into more helpless fall. ”

“ We shall indeed present a sorry spectacle to the world, hiding our heads in the sand, paralyzed with the apprehension that by moving we might break something, while the breakdown has actually occurred and the pieces of the wreck are flying about our ears. ”

“ It has disappeared; the open spots change place, the sombre folds advance and retreat, a sort of wind from the sepulchre pushes forward, hurls back, distends, and disperses these tragic multitudes. What is a fray? ”

“ After braving in silence the storms of perhaps a dozen or twenty centuries, they seem in this, their last calamity, to become somewhat communicative, making sign of a very unwilling acceptance of their fate, holding themselves well up from the ground on knees and elbows, seemingly ill at ease, and anxious, like stubborn wrestlers, to rise again. ”

“ A fire which burns up well when the dreamer lights it means a big family, but a fire that goes out foretells deaths in the home. To see an earthquake or one’s own teeth falling out is regarded as particularly unlucky and forebodes the certain death either of the dreamer or of one of his family. ”

“ If the day opens clear, then becomes cloudy, and goes out in storm, there will be happiness in the beginning, but sorrow at the close; but if clouds and rain herald its awakening, then pass over and leave the sky blue and sunny, there will be trouble at first, but smiling peace as life progresses and declines. Our sky is bright as heart could wish. ”

“ As the moon’s fair image quaketh
In the raging waves of ocean,
Whilst she, in the vault of heaven,
Moves with silent peaceful motion,{188}
Thus, beloved one, thou art moving,
Still and peaceful, and nought quaketh
In my heart save thy dear image,
While my own heart ’tis that shaketh. ”

“ With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall. I caught him, yes, I held him—it may be imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped. ”

“ Back o'er the deep I turn my longing eyes, [Pg 13]
And chide the wayward passions that rebel:
Yet boots it not to think, or to complain,
Musing sad ditties to the reckless main.
To dreams like these, adieu! the pealing bell
Speaks of the hour that stays not—and the day
To life's sad turmoil calls my heart away. ”

“ Doubt swells and surges, with swelling doubt behind! My soul in storm is but a tattered sail, Streaming its ribbons on the torrent gale; In calm, 'tis but a limp and flapping thing: Oh! swell it with thy breath; make it a wing,— To sweep through thee the ocean, with thee the wind Nor rest until in thee its haven it shall find. ”

“ Whether I resolve to fire, earth, water, air,
Or all the elements by scruples, I know not,
Nor greatly care.—Shoot! shoot!
Of all deaths, the violent death is best;
For from ourselves it steals ourselves so fast,
The pain, once apprehended, is quite past. ”

“ It was a sudden revelation, a tinge like a blush which one tried to check and then, as it spread, one yielded to its expansion, and rushed to the farthest verge and there quivered and felt the world come closer, swollen with some astonishing significance, some pressure of rapture, which split its thin skin and gushed and poured with an extraordinary alleviation over the cracks and sores! ”

“ I feel as if I were sitting in the centre of a mighty "reflector." A terrible crude glare is over everything; the earth looks peeled and excoriated; the raw heavens seem to bleed with the quick, hard light. ”

“ I remember I felt an extraordinary persuasion that I was being played with, that presently, when I was upon the very verge of safety, this mysterious death—as swift as the passage of light—would leap after me from the pit about the cylinder, and strike me down. ”

“ The breezes pause in their course and are silent: the clouded sky bends heavily towards the earth; all creation is frozen with terror, and listens for the fearful moment when the God-man shall die,--when the monstrous murder of the Guiltless One shall be completed. ”

“ VIII And you as well must die, beloved dust, And all your beauty stand you in no stead; This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head, This body of flame and steel, before the gust Of Death, or under his autumnal frost, Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead Than the first leaf that fell,—this wonder fled. ”

“ Strange and harrowing must be his story; frightful the storm which embraced the gallant vessel on its course, and wrecked it—thus! ”

“ She had had a real fright but had fallen back to earth. The odd thing was that in her fall her fear too had been dashed down and broken. It was gone. ”

“ Love, she thought, must come suddenly, with great outbursts and lightnings,—a hurricane of the skies, which falls upon life, revolutionizes it, roots up the will like a leaf, and sweeps the whole heart into the abyss. ”

“ Live on, for Love liveth, and earth shall be shaken
By the wind of his wings on the triumphing morning,
When the dead, and their deeds that die not shall awaken,
And the world's tale shall sound in your trumpet of warning,
And the sun smite the banner called Scorn of the Scorning,
And dead pain ye shall trample, dead fruitless desire,
As ye wend to pluck out the new world from the fire. ”

“ But his heart was in a constant, turbulent riot. ”

“ I thought of the glorious spirits who have looked upon them and trodden their rugged sides—of the storms in which they veil their countenances, and the avalanches they hurl thundering to the valleys—of the voices of great deeds, which have echoed from their crags over the wide earth—and of the ages which have broken, like the waves of a mighty sea, upon their everlasting summits! ”

“ So when an angel by divine command,
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land,
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past,
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast;
And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform,
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm. ”

“ Thou and I are but the blind instruments of some irresistible fatality, that hurries us along, like goodly vessels driving before the storm, which are dashed against each other, and so perish. ”

“ And o'er them lowers destruction, high in air,
Upon those jutting crags, whose rugged sides,
Riven in fragments, and like ruins pil'd,
Seem as that giants of those ancient days
When earthborn creatures braved th' Olympic Gods,
Those of whom fable tells, had torn away
Rocks from their solid base, and with strong arm,
Parted the mountains: there the avalanche hangs,
Mighty, but tremulous; just a light breath
Will loosen it from off it's airy throne;
Then down it hurls in wrath, like to the sound
Of thunder amid storms, or as the voice
Of rushing waters—death in its career. ”

“ The vapours linger round the Heights,
They melt—and soon must vanish;
One hour is theirs', nor more is mine—
Sad thought, which I would banish,
But that I know, where'er I go,
Thy genuine image, Yarrow,
Will dwell with me—to heighten joy,
And cheer my mind in sorrow. ”