Bitter are a broken friendship and a dying love. Bitter a woman
scorned, a man betrayed!
Bitter is the secret woe which none can share. Bitter are a brutal
husband and a faithless wife, a silly daughter and a sulky son. Bitter
are a losing card, a losing horse. Bitter the public hiss, the private
sneer. Bitter are old age without respect, manhood without wealth, youth
without fame. Bitter is the east wind's blast; bitter a stepdame's kiss.
It is bitter to mark the woe which we cannot relieve. It is bitter to
die in a foreign land.
But bitterer far than this, than these, than all, is waking from our
first delusion! For then we first feel the nothingness of self; that
hell of sanguine spirits. All is dreary, blank, and cold. The sun of
hope sets without a ray, and the dim night of dark despair shadows only
phantoms. The spirits that guard round us in our pride have gone. Fancy,
weeping, flies. Imagination droops her glittering pinions and sinks into
the earth. Courage has no heart, and love seems a traitor. A busy demon
whispers in our ear that all is vain and worthless, and we among the
vainest of a worthless crew!
And so our young friend here now depreciated as much as he had before
exaggerated his powers.
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