Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1854-01-11
MISCELLA A Y,
From the Home Journal.
Second Love-

Why is it, dear General, that you poets,
from time immemorial, to the present day,
are INCREASINGLY singing Of first love, and
take no note of, and have no stanza to be-
STOW on second, though infinitely more wor-
thy of commendation and song? that is,
when ones own wife is the object, as she
NAV be, and better than another, in The
change the lapse Of some twenty and odd
years may have made in our desires and
affections, provided she has changed with
Them 40 an to suit the new order of our re-
ouirements. Laugh away, ye fashionables,
till YOU crack your sides, at these obsolete
notions but we don't write for you tho we
laugh back again, and give you our pity IN
to the bargain, for your exhausted feelings
which can never rejoice in such rejuyenes-
cence, for your blase hearts dead TO such or
any other renovation. Ye are the withered
flowers, no breath Of mstured emotion will
ever rdgnscitate no home atmosphere ever
occasion to ripen into fruit.
"Love's young dream" forsooth very
pretty in poetry very euphonious in rhyme,
but rational prose would be very apt to call
it Loves young drunken fit, whose sober
waking is awful. Give me the substantial
bliss years have been ripening; the sem
timent, not that has survived the passion,
but tempered it-not made its grave, but its
living monument, in features that always
meet us with smiles, in eyes that watch o.
ver our we'll being in the heart we know
TO be isochronal in its beats, with our own.
Why the sphere of first love is nut shell,
compared with the areaon which the second
enacts ITS part the ticket in the lottery,
we purchase IN doubt and miSgiving, to the
capital prize we have made our own and
enjoy with certainty and satisfaction or as
the prologue to the drama which is to fol.
low, with its four acts Of varied and agreea-
BILE incident-mixed with a little pain to
enhance its pleasures, and It's fifth which
assemblies the characters on the stage to
determine their destinies-ourself the hero;
our wife, if we have been so fortunate in
our selection as to have one many years
our Junior, st:ll so fair that if we are not
Jealous il is not because attractions and ad-
mirers have left her, but because we may
still play the lover with good grace and sln-
cere attachment, and exercise, successfully,
to retain the attentions and devotedness we
once employed to win; and yet so matron-
~, her children will never believe she has
been Belle, or once had dozen at her
feet besides papa. Just wherewthal of the
'divinlty' and the wife, to furnish delightful
materal to memory, to reality, and to fam
cy; so that, if, at any time, your muse is at
loss for creation, you have always at
hand charming substitute, and when you
cannot invent you may describe. Why, my
dear sir, this is better than all the "odors
lied as sooa as shed ;" "mornings winged
beams" or ''lights that ne'er shall shine "a
gam, Tommy Moore's Imagination ever fur
niShed to turn the brains without disturbing
the hearts of those who have revelled in
"love's young dream" but know nothing OF
1.-The sober certainty OF waking bliss"
ELLENDALE. w, b, b.