"
Fading, with the Night, the memory of a dead love, and the withered leaves of a blighted hope, and the sickly repinings and moody regrets thatnumb the best energies of the soul: and rising, broadening, rolling upward like a living flood, the manly resolve, and the dauntless will, and the heavenward gaze of faith--the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen!
When a remembered event has a remembered context, this may occur in two ways, either (a) by successive images in the same order as their prototypes, or (b) by remembering a whole process simultaneously, in the same way in which a present process may be apprehended, through akoluthic sensations which, by
fading, acquire the mark of just-pastness in an increasing degree as they fade, and are thus placed in a series while all sensibly present.
But now my soul hath too much room-- Gone are the glory and the gloom-- The black hath mellow'd into gray, And all the fires are
fading away.
The sunlight pales Athwart the trampled grass; the
fading moon Still twinkles on the frost-flakes scattered round.
Along the cattle-paths the plumes of goldenrod were already
fading into sun-warmed velvet, grey with gold threads in it.
Bean, one of the Americans, was found a note-book in which had been penciled some sentences which admit us, in flesh and spirit, as it were, to the presence of these men during their last hours of life, and to the grisly horrors which their
fading vision looked upon and their failing consciousness took cognizance of:
So when the quiet Autumn of thy fragrant life shall come, Thou mayst pass away, to bloom in the Flower Spirits' home." Then from the mother's breast, where it still lay hid, Into the
fading bud the dew-drop gently slid; Stronger grew the little form, and happy tears fell, As the dew did its silent work, and the bud grew well, While the gentle rose leaned, with motherly pride, O'er the fair little ones that bloomed at her side.
The rush of the yellow flood-tide hurries her up as if into the unknown between the two
fading lines of the coast.
How should we have new knowledge of that
fading past?
For my own poor part, the
fading summer left me out of health, out of spirits, and, if the truth must be told, out of money as well.
Never had that lady seemed a more tempting subject than at that moment, seated there like some sensuous Madonna, with the gleam of the
fading day enriching her splendid color.
But it was a comfort that there could be no uneasiness in a connection with anything so beatific as the radiant image of my little girl, the vision of whose angelic beauty had probably more than anything else to do with the restlessness that, before morning, made me several times rise and wander about my room to take in the whole picture and prospect; to watch, from my open window, the faint summer dawn, to look at such portions of the rest of the house as I could catch, and to listen, while, in the
fading dusk, the first birds began to twitter, for the possible recurrence of a sound or two, less natural and not without, but within, that I had fancied I heard.