CHAPTER VI. -Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove, Oh no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worths unknown, although his height be taken, Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours, and weeks, But bears it out, e'en to the edge of doom. If this be error, and upon me prov'd, I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd." SHAKSPEARE. ON THE PERMANENCE OF MARRIED LOVE. THERE is a material difference between excited passion and real love. The one is necessarily transient, the other will be abiding. Persons confound these essentially different emotions who conclude that married love cannot abide, or be constant and unceasing. It may be true that years will prune the luxurious tree, that age and experience will regulate, and probably moderate certain external manifestations, but this will not affect Love itself. Years will only strengthen and mature it. Time will only give it deeper and fuller realization. If the object be worthy, or even if we think so, love will increase by continuous intercourse and communion. Besides daily acts of kindness, must strengthen and confirm it-when husbands and wives have to pass through scenes of mutual anxiety and sorrow-where they have been inseparable pilgrims though desert and trackless journeyings of affliction, how can it be otherwise than mutual affection; and how cheering it is to see the love of youth, having ripened with age, and being matured midst the frosts and winter of old age. There are certain productions of nature that must feel the biting influence of frosts before they are fit to be gathered. And we know that storms and tempests of succeeding years only tend to fix the roots of trees more deeply in the soil, and to cause the fibrous off-shoots to take more firmly hold, and to stand more irresistibly in spite of threatening and howling blasts. So with true love, age will fix it more firmly, root it in the soil of the heart more deeply, and will cause the solicitudes of the soul more emotionally to entwine around the being loved. We ask the reader to look around, and if they will only take a close and careful survey they will find conjugal love that out-lived youth and beauty-that has not been poisoned by wealth or rank, or chilled by adversity and misfortune that has lived in spite of temptations and trials that has not succumbed to allurements-that has not become hard or wiry with age-that has not lost the original first emotional power-that shines as brightly, and exists as unmistakeably as it ever did—that is now venerable, as well as real, and so established, that it shall survive not only sickness and death, but which has the germ within it of immortality. Well is it when religion, true undefiled religion, has still more elevated and fixed this mutual love. For who can doubt that in the world of the Blessed, there will not only be an extended knowledge, but mutual and joyous recognition; and that husbands and wives, and parents and child, who live in the true faith, and die in the hope of the Gospel, will, after the temporary severances of death, enjoy a blissful re-union, and when cleansed from all earthly emotions-the spirits, thus united, will be sources of mutual felicity, and enjoy the same benedictions for evermore. LOVE'S IMMORTALITY. "They sin who tell us love can die! In Heaven ambition cannot dwell, Earthly these passions of the earth, They perish where they have their birth: But love is indestructible, Its holy flame for ever burneth, From Heaven it came, to Heaven returneth: For oft on earth a troubled guest, At times deceived, at times oppress'd, It here is tried and purified, Then hath in Heaven its perfect rest: It soweth here with toil and care, But the harvest time of love is there." SOUTHEY. "Believe me, if all those endearing young charms, Which I gaze on so fondly to-day, Were to change by to-morrow, and fleet in my arms, Like fairy-gifts fading away, Thou would'st still be ador'd, as this moment thou art, Let thy loveliness fade as it will, And around the dear ruin each wish of my heart Would entwine itself verdantly still. It is not while beauty and youth are thine own, That the fervour and faith of a soul can be known, But as truly loves on to the close, As the sun-flower turns on her god, when he sets, The same look which she turn'd when he rose." MOORE. G |