(Written in May)
Dear P----,What have I suffered since I parted with you!A raging fire is in my heart and in my brain,that never quits me.The steam-boat (which I foolishly ventured on board)seems a prison-house,a sort of spectre-ship,moving on through an infernal lake,without wind or tide,by some necromantic power--the splashing of the waves,the noise of the engine gives me no rest,night or day--no tree,no natural object varies the scene--but the abyss is before me,and all my peace lies weltering in it!I feel the eternity of punishment in this life;for I see no end of my woes.The people about me are ill,uncomfortable,wretched enough,many of them--but to-morrow or next day,they reach the place of their destination,and all will be new and delightful.To me it will be the same.I can neither escape from her,nor from myself.All is endurable where there is a limit:but I have nothing but the blackness and the fiendishness of scorn around me--mocked by her (the false one)in whom I placed my hope,and who hardens herself against me!--I believe you thought me quite gay,vain,insolent,half mad,the night I left the house--no tongue can tell the heaviness of heart I felt at that moment.
No footsteps ever fell more slow,more sad than mine;for every step bore me farther from her,with whom my soul and every thought lingered.
I had parted with her in anger,and each had spoken words of high disdain,not soon to be forgiven.Should I ever behold her again?
Where go to live and die far from her?In her sight there was Elysium;her smile was heaven;her voice was enchantment;the air of love waved round her,breathing balm into my heart:for a little while I had sat with the Gods at their golden tables,I had tasted of all earth's bliss,"both living and loving!"But now Paradise barred its doors against me;I was driven from her presence,where rosy blushes and delicious sighs and all soft wishes dwelt,the outcast of nature and the scoff of love!
I thought of the time when I was a little happy careless child,of my father's house,of my early lessons,of my brother's picture of me when a boy,of all that had since happened to me,and of the waste of years to come--I stopped,faultered,and was going to turn back once more to make a longer truce with wretchedness and patch up a hollow league with love,when the recollection of her words--"I always told you I had no affection for you"--steeled my resolution,and I determined to proceed.
You see by this she always hated me,and only played with my credulity till she could find some one to supply the place of her unalterable attachment to THE LITTLE IMAGE.I am a little,a very little better to-day.Would it were quietly over;and that this misshapen form (made to be mocked)were hid out of the sight of cold,sullen eyes!The people about me even take notice of my dumb despair,and pity me.What is to be done?I cannot forget HER;and I can find no other like what SHE SEEMED.I should wish you to call,if you can make an excuse,and see whether or no she is quite marble--whether I may go back again at my return,and whether she will see me and talk to me sometimes as an old friend.Suppose you were to call on M----from me,and ask him what his impression is that I ought to do.But do as you think best.Pardon,pardon.
P.S.--I send this from Scarborough,where the vessel stops for a few minutes.I scarcely know what I should have done,but for this relief to my feelings.
