Autumn brought an hourThere is one thing that I dread more for my little Maiden than to hear her say “I will,” namely, that she should lose the power of saying it. A broken, impaired, will-less nature — a life filled with memory's
For Eustace, when I heard his deep I will
Breathed, like the covenant of a God, to hold
From thence through all the worlds.
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wrote to me, “His heart was pure-and terrible; I think there was not another like it on earth.”
She was wrong; for there were, in the older and sterner times, a good many like it, though none more heroic, more single-minded, or more tenacious.
The modern theory is-and I confess it seems to Inc the wiser one--that the will itself is a part of the sacredness of our nature, and should no more be broken than the main shaft of a steam — engine.
You shudder when your boy cries, “I will!”
in the adjoining room, in that defiant tone which is a storm-signal to the parents' car. The fault is not, however, in the words; spoken in the right place and right tone, they represent the highest moral condition of which man is capable, since resignation itself is not a virtue so noble as is a concentrated and heroic purpose.
How superbly does Tennyson state.
the dignity of those words when he paints the marriage in “The Gardener's daughter!”
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