THE MUMMY.
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sion? No, not one! there is, indeed, something generous and ennobling in it. We cannot prefer the welfare of another to our own, nor be completely absorbed in anothers being, with the devotedness of true love, without becoming purified in our ideas, and raised from that disgusting selfishness which is ever the inspirer of base and mean actions.
Yes, love indeed is light from Heaven,
A spark of that immortal fire,
With angels shared, by Alla given,
To lift from earth our low desire.
Devotion wafts the mind above,
But Heaven itself descends in love.
And from this heavenly, this inspiring feeling, shall my unfortunate client be debarred? Hear me, ye shades of heroic lovers, who, though dying for the hopeless object of your passion, have still exclaimed, with the enthusiastic devotion of a modern poet—
Lead on, lead on, though horrors wait
In awful fury round thy gate!
And danger, death, and grim despair,
Forbid my hopeless passage there!
If love, still smiling, beckon on,
The path is passed, the gate is won!