It was simple,—­but it was true.  I had written it myself, I had tried to write a poetical epitaph, but in vain; my feelings refused to utter themselves in rhyme.  My heart had gradually been filling during my lonely wanderings; it was now charged to the brim, and overflowed, I sunk upon the grave, and buried my face in the tall grass, and wept like a child.  Yes, I wept in manhood upon the grave, as I had in infancy upon the bosom, of my mother.  Alas! how little do we appreciate a mother’s tenderness while living! how heedless are we in youth of all her anxieties and kindness!  But when she is dead and gone; when the cares and coldness of the world come withering to our hearts; when we find how hard it is to find true sympathy;—­how few love us for ourselves; how few will befriend us in our misfortunes—­then it is that we think of the mother we have lost.  It is true I had always loved my mother, even in my most heedless days; but I felt how inconsiderate and ineffectual had been my love.  My heart melted as I retraced the days of infancy, when I was led by a mother’s hand, and rocked to sleep in a mother’s arms, and was without care or sorrow.  “O my mother!” exclaimed I, burying my face again in the grass of the grave, “O that I were once more by your side; sleeping never to wake again on the cares and troubles of this world.”

I am not naturally of a morbid temperament, and the violence of my emotion gradually exhausted itself.  It was a hearty, honest, natural discharge of grief which had been slowly accumulating, and gave me wonderful relief.  I rose from the grave as if I had been offering up a sacrifice, and I felt as if that sacrifice had been accepted.

I sat down again on the grass, and plucked one by one the weeds from her grave:  the tears trickled more slowly down my cheeks, and ceased to be bitter.  It was a comfort to think that she had died before sorrow and poverty came upon her child, and all his great expectations were blasted.

I leaned my cheek upon my hand, and looked upon the landscape.  Its quiet beauty soothed me.  The whistle of a peasant from an adjoining field came cheerily to my ear.  I seemed to respire hope and comfort with the free air that whispered through the leaves, and played lightly with my hair, and dried the tears upon my cheek.  A lark, rising from the field before me, and leaving as it were a stream of song behind him as he rose, lifted my fancy with him.  He hovered in the air just above the place where the towers of Warwick castle marked the horizon, and seemed as if fluttering with delight at his own melody.  “Surely,” thought I, “if there were such a thing as a transmigration of souls, this might be taken for some poet let loose from earth, but still revelling in song, and carolling about fair fields and lordly towers.”

* * * * *

From “The Life and Voyages of Columbus.”

=_181._= COLUMBUS A PRISONER.