Dreadful as the time was when I pursued my father towards the ocean, & found their [_sic_] only his lifeless corpse; yet for my own sake I should prefer that to the watching one by one his senses fade; his pulse weaken--and sleeplessly as it were devour his life in gazing.

To see life in his limbs & to know that soon life would no longer be there; to see the warm breath issue from his lips and to know they would soon be chill--I will not continue to trace this frightful picture; you suffered this torture once; I never did.[85] And the remembrance fills your heart sometimes with bitter despair when otherwise your feelings would have melted into soft sorrow.
So day by day I become weaker, and life flickers in my wasting form, as a lamp about to loose it vivifying oil.

I now behold the glad sun of May.

It was May, four years ago, that I first saw my beloved father; it was in May, three years ago that my folly destroyed the only being I was doomed to love.

May is returned, and I die.