A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 161 pages of information about A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains,.

A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 161 pages of information about A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains,.
polishing my lines; and having finished them to my heart’s content, I gave them to my father about the middle of the day, conscious, I could not but be, that they had “passed as a cloud between the mental eye of faith and things unseen.”  Every time they passed through my mind, they seemed to sound my condemnation.  My evening retirement was dark and sad; I felt as if any thing but this I could give up for my Saviour’s love; “all things are lawful, but all things are not expedient;” and yet the taste and the power were given me, with all things else, by God.  I had used them too in a right cause, but then the talent of grace is far better.  Which should be sacrificed?  Why sacrifice either?  I could not deny that it seemed impossible to keep both.  But it might be made useful, if well employed.  “To obey is better than sacrifice.”  Now they are written, they might just as well be printed; but the printing will probably be the most hazardous part.  I shall be sure to write more, and nourish vanity:  or else the sight of them will cause remorse rather than pleasure.  If I should lose my soul through poetry?  For the life of self seems bound up in it; and “whosoever loveth his life shall lose it.”  But perhaps it would be a needless piece of austerity; it would be a great struggle; it would be like binding myself for the future, not to enjoy my treasured pleasure.  The sacrifice which is acceptable will always cost something.  So I prevailed upon myself to write a note, and lay it before my father, asking him not to send them, trembling lest he should dislike my changeableness, or I should change again and repent it.  My father said nothing, but gave me back the lines when we were all together, which was a mountain got over.  I thought to have had more peace after; but till this First-day I have been very desolate, though, I believe, daily desiring to seek my God above all; and thinking, sometimes, that that for which I had made a sacrifice became thereby dearer.

After this striking and instructive account, which shows how zealously she endeavored to guard against any too absorbing influence, however good and allowable in itself the thing might be, it seems not amiss to remark that Eliza’s taste for poetry was keen and discriminating; and that her love of external nature, and more especially her deeper and holier feelings, found appropriate expression in verse.  If some of these effusions show a want of careful finish, it must be remembered that they were not written for publication, but for the sake of embodying the feeling of the occasion, in that form which naturally presented itself.

The pieces alluded to in the foregoing extracts are the following:—­

  “WHAT I DO THOU KNOWEST NOT NOW.”

  Hast thou long thy Lord’s abiding
    Vainly sought ’mid shadows dim? 
  Lo!  His purpose wisely hiding,
    Thee He seeks to worship him.

  Shades of night, thy strain’d eye scorning,
    Have they; long enwrapp’d the skies? 
  He, whose word commands the morning,
    Soon shall bid the day-spring rise!

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A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.