[t] regret this; for death
is a too terrible an [_sic_] object for the living. It is one of those
adversities which hurt instead of purifying the heart; for it is so
intense a misery that it hardens & dulls the feelings. Dreadful as the
time was when I pursued my father towards the ocean, & found their
[_sic_] only his lifeless corpse; yet for my own sake I should prefer
that to the watching one by one his senses fade; his pulse weaken--and
sleeplessly as it were devour his life in gazing. To see life in his
limbs & to know that soon life would no longer be there; to see the
warm breath issue from his lips and to know they would soon be
chill--I will not continue to trace this frightful picture; you
suffered this torture once; I never did.[85] And the remembrance fills
your heart sometimes with bitter despair when otherwise your feelings
would have melted into soft sorrow.

So day by day I become weaker, and life flickers in my wasting form,
as a lamp about to loose it vivifying oil. I now behold the glad sun
of May. It was May, four years ago, that I first saw my beloved
father; it was in May, three years ago that my folly destroyed the
only being I was doomed to love. May is returned, and I die. Three
days ago, the anniversary of our meeting; and, alas! of our eternal
seperation, after a day of killing emotion, I caused myself to be led
once more to behold the face of nature. I caused myself to be carried
to some meadows some miles distant from my cottage; the grass was
being mowed, and there was the scent of hay in the fields; all the
earth look[ed] fresh and its inhabitants happy. Evening approached and
I beheld the sun set. Three years ago and on that day and hour it
shone through the branches and leaves of the beech wood and its beams
flickered upon the countenance of him whom I then beheld for the last
time.[86] I now saw that divine orb, gilding all the clouds with
unwonted splendour, sink behind the horizon; it disappeared from a
world where he whom I would seek exists not; it approached a world
where he exists not[.] Why do I weep so bitterly? Why my [_sic_] does
my heart heave with vain endeavour to cast aside the bitter anguish
that covers it "as the waters cover the sea." I go from this world
where he is no longer and soon I shall meet him in another.

Farewell, Woodville, the turf will soon be green on my grave; and the
violets will bloom on it. _There_ is my hope and my expectation;
your's are in this w