Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Volume II eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 366 pages of information about Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Volume II.

Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Volume II eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 366 pages of information about Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Volume II.

NEW YORK.

JOURNALS, LETTERS, &c.

* * * * *

  “How much, preventing God, how much.  I owe
    To the defences thou hast round me set! 
  Example, Custom, Fear, Occasion slow,—­
    These scorned bondsmen were my parapet. 
    I dare not peep over this parapet,
  To gauge with glance the roaring gulf below,
  The depths of sin to which I had descended,
  Had not these me against myself defended.”

  “Di te, finor, chiesto non hai severa
  Ragione a te; di sua virtu non cade
  Sospetto in cor conscio a se stesso.”

  ALFIERI.

  “He that lacks time to mourn, lacks time to mend;
  Eternity mourns that.  ’Tis an ill cure
  For life’s worst ills, to have no time to feel them. 
  Where sorrow’s held intrusive, and turned out,
  There wisdom, will not enter, nor true power,
  Nor aught that dignifies humanity.”

  TAYLOR.

  “That time of year thou may’st in me behold,
    When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang
  Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
    Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. 
  In me thou seest the twilight of such day,
    As after sunset fadeth in the west;
  Which by and by black night doth take away,—­
    Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest. 
  In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
    That on the ashes of his youth doth lie;
  As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
    Consumed with that which it was nourished by.”

  SHAKSPEARE. [Sonnet lxxiii.]

  “Aber zufrieden mit stillerem Ruhme,
  Brechen die Frauen des Augenblick’s Blume,
  Naehren sie sorgsam mit liebendem Fleiss,
  Freier in ihrem gebundenen Wirken,
  Reicher als er in des Wissens Bezirken
  Und in der Dichtung unendlichem Kreiz.”

  SCHILLER.

  “Not like to like, but like in difference;
  Yet in the long years liker must they grow,—­
  The man be more of woman, she of man;
  He gain in sweetness and in moral height,
  Nor lose the wrestling thews that throw the world;
  She mental breadth, nor fail in childward care;
  More as the double-natured poet each;
  Till at the last she set herself to man,
  Like perfect music unto noble words.”

  TENNYSON.

VII.

NEW YORK

* * * * *

LEAVING HOME.

Incessant exertion in teaching and writing, added to pecuniary anxieties and domestic cares, had so exhausted Margaret’s energy, in 1844, that she felt a craving for fresh interests, and resolved to seek an entire change of scene amid freer fields of action.

‘The tax on my mind is such,’ she writes,

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Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Volume II from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.