To those, indeed, who realized how deeply he felt these changes,--
how profoundly his notion of national happiness was bound up with a
lovely and vanishing ideal,--the prominent reflection was that the
hopes and principles which maintained through all an underlying hope
and trust in the future must have been potent indeed. It was no easy
optimism which prompted the lines written in 1837--one of his latest
utterances--in which he speaks to himself with strong self-judgment
and resolute hope. On reading them one shrinks from dwelling longer
upon an old man's weakness and a brave man's fears.
If this great world of joy and pain
Revolve in one sure track;
If Freedom, set, revive again,
And Virtue, flown, come back,--
Woe to the purblind crew who fill
The heart with each day's care,
Nor learn, from past and future, skill
To bear and to forbear.
The poet had also during these years more of private sorrow than his
tranquil life had for a long time experienced. In 1832 his sister
had a most serious illness, which kept her for many months in a
state of great prostration, and left her, when the physical symptoms
abated, with her intellect painfully impaired, and her bright nature
permanently overclouded.
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