The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse
to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal, every other
affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to
keep open, this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.
Where is the mother who would willingly forget the infant that
perished like a blossom from her arms though every recollection
is a pang? Where is the child that would willingly forget the
most tender of parents, though to remember be but to lament? Who,
even in the hour of agony, would forget the friend over whom he
mourns? Who, even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of
her he most loved, when he feels his heart, as it were, crushed
in the closing of its portal, would accept of consolation that
must be bought by forgetfulness? No, the love which survives the
tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its
woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming
burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection,
when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present
ruins of all that we most loved is softened away into pensive
meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness, who
would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may
sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gayety,
or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would
exchange it even for the song of pleasure or the burst of
revelry? No, there is a voice from the tomb sweeter than song.
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