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!”
Harper and Brothers, Franklin Square, New York. 1888.
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