and what was this immortality? A dark and measureless future. Alas! we
had mistaken life for felicity! What was my knowledge? it only served to
show its own vanity; what was my power, when its exercise only served to
work out the decrees of an inexorable necessity? I had parted myself
from my kind, but I had not acquired the nature of a spirit. I had lost
of humanity but its illusions, and they alone are what render it
supportable. The mystic scrolls over which I had once pored with such
intenseness, were now flung aside; what could they teach me? Time was to
me but one great vacancy; how could I fill it up, who had neither labour
nor excitement? I set me down mournfully, and thought of the past. Why,
when love is perished, should its memory remain? I had said to myself,
so long as I have life, one deep feeling must absorb my existence.
A change--and that too of my own earnest seeking--had passed over my
being; and the past, which had been so precious, was now as a frightful
phantasm. The love which alters, in its inconstancy may set up a
new idol, and worship again with a pleasant blindness; but the love
which leaves the heart with a full knowledge of its own vanity and
nothingness,--which saith, The object of my passion still remains, but
it is worthless in my sight--never more can I renew my early feeling--I
marvel how I ever could have loved--I loathe, I disdain the weakness of
my former self;--ah, the end of such love is indeed despair!

"Do you mark yonder black marble slab, which is spread as over a tomb?
It covers the most silvery fountain that ever mirrored the golden light
of noon, or caught the fall of the evening dew, in an element bright
as themselves. The radiant likeness of a spirit rests on those waters.
I bade him give duration to the shadow he flung upon the wave, that
I might gaze on it during his absence. The first act of my immortality
was to shut it from my sight. There must that black marble rest for
ever."