Excerpt from Hitherto Unpublished Poems and Stories: With an Inedited Autobiography

To be one's own chronicler is a task generally dic tated by extreme vanity and often by that instinc tive feeling which prompts the soul of Man to snatch the records of his life from the dull and misty ocean of oblivion Man is naturally enamoured of immortality, and tho the brazen trump of fame echoes his deeds when he sleeps when the cold sod weighs on his corrupted form yet he shrinks from that deathlike that awful stillness the dreadful attribute of the grave. Nothing can more plainly denote the soul's eternity than the instinctive thirst for immortality which universally throbs in the heart of man. Would that benevolent Being whose kind spirit finds pleasure in the happiness of his Creatures implant in their bosoms such a feeling in vain? Is it consonant with divine mercy to tantalize us afar with the bright and heavenly fields of immortality and then closing at once the glorious prospect, forbid that endearing hope to console, and allow the cold turf to moulder with our dust condemning the soul which once animated [it] to find its last sad asylum in the grave? The sage amidst sandy deserts or buried in the awful stillness of wooded vales may boast that he can forget the world anddespise its greatness, but oh can he as sincerely de sire to be forgotten by it? Can he gaze unmoved on the damp and solitary tomb which his own hands have framed and where soon his wearied limbs shall lay? And tho sensible that the world cannot soothe the dull cold ear of death yet does not that silence seem awful even to him? Does it not appear dreadful to descend into that damp grave unseen, unheard, unwept for, and forgot ten?

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