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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes: the fact that some of the holiest lives and some of the sweetest
songs are the growth of the infirmity which unfits its subject for
the rougher duties of life. When one reads the life of Cowper, or
of Keats, or of Lucretia and Margaret Davidson, - of so many
gentle, sweet natures, born to weakness, and mostly dying before
their time, - one cannot help thinking that the human race dies out
singing, like the swan in the old story. The French poet, Gilbert,
who died at the Hotel Dieu, at the age of twenty-nine, - (killed by
a key in his throat, which he had swallowed when delirious in
consequence of a fall,) - this poor fellow was a very good example
of the poet by excess of sensibility. I found, the other day, that
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table |
