No young man believes he will ever
die. It was a saying of my brother's, and a fine one.
There is a feeling of eternity in youth, which makes us
amend for everything.
To be young is to be as one of the immortal Gods.
One half of time indeed is flown—the other half remains in store for us with all its countless treasures, for there is no line drawn, and we see no limit to our hopes and wishes.
We make the coming age our own—the
vast, the unbounded prospect lies before us.
Death, old age are words without a meaning that pass by us like the idea air which we regard not.
Others may have undergone, or may still be
liable to them—we "bear a charmed life", which laughs to
scorn all such sickly fancies. As in
setting out on
delightful journey, we
strain our eager gaze forward—bidding the lovely scenes at distance hail!
And see no end to the
landscape, new objects presenting themselves as we advance.
So, in the
commencement of life, we set no bounds to our inclinations, nor to the unrestricted opportunities of gratifying them.
We have as yet found no
obstacle, no
disposition to
flag; and it seems that we can go on so forever.
We look round in a new world, full of life, and motion, and ceaseless progress; and feel in ourselves all the
vigor and spirit to keep
pace with it, and do not
foresee from any present symptoms how we shall be left behind in the natural course of things,
decline into old age, and drop into the
grave.
It is the
simplicity, and as it were abstractedness of our feelings in youth, that identifies us with nature, and deludes us into a belief of being immortal like it.
Our short lives connexion with existence we fondly
flatter ourselves is an indissoluble and
lastingunion—a honeymoon that knows neither coldness,
jar, nor separation.
As infants ile and sleep, we are rocked in the cradle of our wayward fancies, and lulled into
security by the roar of the
universe around us—we
quaff the cup of life with eager
hastewithout draining it, instead of which it only overflows the more objects
press around us,filling the mind with their
magnitude and with the strong of desires that wait upon them,so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.
