She felt no
sympathy with the realities--the commonplaces of life; her thoughts were
too aspiring for earth, yet found not their resting-place in heaven! It
was no grovelling, degrading superstition which actuated her: she sighed
for powers above her species,--she aspired to hold intercourse with
beings of a superior nature. She would gaze for hours in wild delirium
on the blue sky and starry vault, and wish she were freed from the base
encumbrances of earth, that she might shine out among those glorious
intelligences in regions without a shadow or a cloud. Imagination was
her solace and her curse; she flew to it for relief as the drunkard to
his cup, sparkling and intoxicating for a while, but its dregs were
bitterness and despair. Soon her world of imagination began to quicken;
and, as the wind came sighing through her dark ringlets, or rustling
over the dry grass and heather bushes at her side, she thought a spirit
spoke, or a celestial messenger crossed her path. The unholy rites of
the witches were familiar to her ear, but she spurned their vulgar and
low ambition; she panted for communion with beings more
exalted--demigods and immortals, of whom she had heard as having been
translated to those happier skies, forming the glorious constellations
she beheld.
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