The labyrinth of Science opes with wonders every day;
And friendship hath full many a flower to cheer life's dreary
way.
And glancing through the pages of the "Lowell Offering" a year or
two later, I see that I continued to dismalize myself at times,
quite unnecessarily. The title of one sting of morbid verses is
"The Complaint of a Nobody," in which I compare myself to a weed
growing up in a garden; and the conclusion of it all is this
stanza:--
"When the fierce storms are raging, I will not repine,
Though I'm heedlessly crushed in the strife;
For surely 't were better oblivion were mine
Than a worthless, inglorious life.
Now I do not suppose that I really considered myself a weed,
though I did sometimes fancy that a different kind of cultivation
would tend to make me a more useful plant. I am glad to remember
that these discontented fits were only occasional, for certainly
they were unreasonable. I was not unhappy; this was an affect-
ation of unhappiness; and half conscious that it was, I hid it
behind a different signature from my usual one
How truly Wordsworth describes this phase of undeveloped
feeling:--
"In youth sad fancies we affect,
In luxury of disrespect
To our own prodigal excess
Of too familiar happiness.
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