Shame and oppression
erelong awaken their love of liberty.
To these that sober Race of Men, whose lives Religious titl'd them the Sons of God, Shall yeild up all thir vertue, all thir fame Ignobly, to the trains and to the smiles Of these fair Atheists, and now swim in joy, (
Erelong to swim at larg) and laugh; for which The world
erelong a world of tears must weepe.
Thus,
erelong, buds fairer than that she had lost lay on the rose mother's breast, and for all she had suffered she was well repaid by the love of Lily-Bell and her sister flowers.
In the second elegy, the poet casts herself as a Diana figure who will seduce her admirer with lute-playing: "Mais j e vouldrois lors quant, et quant avoir / Mon petit Luth accorde au debvoir, / Duquel ayant cogneu, et pris le son, / J'entonnerois sur luy une chanson" ("Oh, yes, and I should like to have close by / My precious Lute, well tuned to gratify: / Familiar with its sounds, I would
erelong / Begin to sing for him a tender song", Du Guillet, 153-154).
But,
erelong, he lost faith in British promises, British justice, British conduct, even as his co-religionists did.
He is illuminating on this point when he describes his visit to Yordas Cave, described by Hutton, in Book VIII of The Prelude (1805): "He looks and sees the Cavern spread and grow, / Widening itself on all sides, sees, or thinks / He sees,
erelong, the roof above his head, / Which instantly unsettles and recedes / Substance and shadow, light and darkness, all / Commingled, making up a canopy / Of shapes and forms and tendencies to shape, / That shift and vanish, change and interchange / Like spectres, ferment quiet and sublime" (l.
By a steady adherence to the Union we may hope,
erelong, to become the arbiter of Europe in competitions in this part of the world as our interest may dictate." (6) Here is a clear articulation of a navy's instrumental logic.
Webster's cycle thus might be read as revising Shakespeare's concluding charge in sonnet 7 3 to read: "love that well which must leave thou
erelong." (37) The poignancy of lovers who fear change or death is given a twist, as the mother foresees the inevitable transformation of infant to girl and girl to woman.
It rises up slowly to our conscious minds as we watch Adam's descendants lapse into sinfulness, for which, Michael darkly hints, 'The world
erelong a world of tears must weep' (XI.
Continuing this comparison later in the same passage, Thoreau writes, "But as I poured it slowly out on the sand, it seemed to me that man himself was like a half-emptied bottle of pale ale, which Time had drunk so far, yet stopped tight for a while, and drifting about in the ocean of circumstances; but destined
erelong to mingle with the surrounding waves, or be spilled amid the sands of a distant shore" (92).
In response to persons subject to a perpetual sense of "something wrong," the healthy-minded person would say something like, "'Stuff and nonsense, get out into the open air!' or 'Cheer up old fellow, you'll be all right
erelong, if you will only drop your morbidness!'" (127)