“Friendship
is the balm of life to every honest heart, which time strengthens, misfortune
purifies, superior to fate and survivor of the passions. From what do we not find consolation in a
friend? Love cools, pleasure has its
periods, riches take to themselves wings and fly away. As years advance mankind retires from our
company—we insensibly become strangers to the world—society feels not our
loss—we seek our asylum from the tediousness of age, and find it in
friendship. We mingle our last tears
with her sympathetic streams, and commit to her tenderness the care to scatter
roses on our tombs.
New London
E.S.G.
They that fix
Affections perfect trust on ought of earth have many
a dream to start from.”
To Mary
“Though time exerts his tyrant power
Each happy or each painful hour,
From memory’s page to blot;--
Though ocean may between us roll,
Though parted far as pole to pole,
I could forget thee not.
To friendship’s long asserted claim,
I am not careless or untrue,
I feel the tie, the sacred flame
That long since bound my heart to you
Abigail
Salem, Sept 20th, 1828
Reflections on Autumn
How sublime is the solitude of nature in this her season of transient decay. The melancholy grandeur of the towering trees now verdureless, with the rustling of the foliage at every breath of heaven strewing the green moss of the forest with beautiful yet fading hues forcibly reminds the youthful bosom of life’s advancing period. As the wind of autumn desolates the summer verdur, thus misfortune oft blights our early hopes; like the tumbling foliage, they linger for awhile in fading beauty, but time and sorrow soon rob them of every hue which charmed while disappointment leaves the young mind sunk in apathy or fondly awakening to new hopes as perishing as the former, not soon to be renovated by a second spring. Yet in the profound stillness and solitude of nature, rather than in society, while all around conspires to raise and sublimate the mind, the heart will learn resignation—it will feel the utter insignificance of these little hopes and fears which belong alone to earth; and while the impressive voices of nature tells of its great Author, the mind in looking forward to its high, immortal destiny, will rise, superior to the trifling ills which alloy the happiness of this its transient passage, in reflecting on that eternal spring which will most amply repay “the noble few who here unbending stand beneath life’s pressure” for its load of ills.
Salem October 1828, Marianne
Friendship. -- Plato says, “I had rather have one good friend than all the delights and treasures of Darius” and Cicero, “that neither water, fire nor the air we breathe are more necessary to us than friendship”. The writings of Tully are full of expressions to the same purpose, Xenophon pronounced of its perfection, “that it was above the reach of the highest human endowment. Bius said “that man had secured the highest good of life who had chosen a worthy friend”. Zeno, being asked “What is a friend” answered “he is another I”.
The heart that on a heart can rest
Secure from treachery’s every wile
Should deem itself supremely blest
And on the wreck of fortune smile. MAB [same hand as Marianne]