The Flight of Hilda's Doves

It might be supposed that a melancholy man would here make acquaintance
with a grim philosophy. He should learn to bear patiently his individual
griefs, that endure only for one little lifetime, when here are the
tokens of such infinite misfortune on an imperial scale, and when so
many far landmarks of time, all around him, are bringing the remoteness
of a thousand years ago into the sphere of yesterday. But it is in vain
that you seek this shrub of bitter sweetness among the plants that root
themselves on the roughness of massive walls, or trail downward from the
capitals of pillars, or spring out of the green turf in the palace of
the Caesars. It does not grow in Rome; not even among the five hundred
various weeds which deck the grassy arches of the Coliseum. You look
through a vista of century beyond century,--through much shadow, and a
little sunshine,--through barbarism and civilization, alternating with
one another like actors that have prearranged their parts: through
a broad pathway of progressive generations bordered by palaces and
temples, and bestridden by old, triumphal arches, until, in the
distance, you behold the obelisks, with their unintelligible
inscriptions, hinting at a past infinitely more remote than history
can define. Your own life is as nothing, when compared with that
immeasurable distance; but still you demand, none the less earnestly, a
gleam of sunshine, instead of a speck of shadow, on the step or two that
will bring you to your quiet rest.

How exceedingly absurd! All men, from the date of the earliest
obelisk,--and of the whole world, moreover, since that far epoch, and
before,--have made a similar demand, and seldom had their wish. If they
had it, what are they the better now? But, even while you taunt yourself
with this sad lesson, your heart cries out obstreperously for its small
share of earthly happiness, and will not be appeased by the myriads of
dead hopes that lie crushed into the soil of Rome. How wonderful
that this our narrow foothold of the Present should hold its own so
constantly, and, while every moment changing, should still be like a
rock betwixt the encountering tides of the long Past and the infinite
To-come!