My heart beat thick, my head
grew hot; a sound filled my ears which I deemed the rustling of wings;
something seemed near me." {4}
"From that time," Mary adds, "her imaginations became gloomy or
frightful; she could not help it, nor help thinking. She could not
forget the gloom, could not sleep at night, nor attend in the day.
"She told me that one night, sitting alone, about this time, she heard a
voice repeat these lines:
"'Come thou high and holy feeling,
Shine o'er mountain, flit o'er wave,
Gleam like light o'er dome and shielding.'
"There were eight or ten more lines which I forget. She insisted that
she had not made them, that she had heard a voice repeat them. It is
possible that she had read them, and unconsciously recalled them. They
are not in the volume of poems which the sisters published. She repeated
a verse of Isaiah, which she said had inspired them, and which I have
forgotten. Whether the lines were recollected or invented, the tale
proves such habits of sedentary, monotonous solitude of thought as would
have shaken a feebler mind."
Of course, the state of health thus described came on gradually, and is
not to be taken as a picture of her condition in 1836. Yet even then
there is a despondency in some of her expressions, that too sadly reminds
one of some of Cowper's letters.
Pages:
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182