The Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Chapter 7, 8, 9

I reposed myself here a week, to rest and regale myself after my long journey; during which, most of the time was taken up in the weighty affair of making a cage for my poll, who began now to be a mere domestic, and to be mighty well acquainted with me. Then I began to think of the poor kid which I had pent in within my little circle, and resolved to go and fetch it home, and give it some food; accordingly I went, and found it where I left it; for, indeed, it could not get out, but was almost starved for want of food. I went and cut boughs of trees, and branches of such shrubs, as I could find, and threw it over, and having fed it, I tied it as I did before, to lead it away; but it was so tame with being hungry, that I had no need to have tied it, for it followed me like a dog: and, as I continually fed it, the creature became so loving, so gentle, and so fond, that it became from that time one of my domestics also, and would never leave me afterwards.

The rainy season of the autumnal equinox was now come, and I kept the 30th of September in the same solemn manner as before, being the anniversary of my landing on the island, having now been there two years, and no more prospect of being delivered than the first day I came there. I spent the whole day in humble and thankful acknowledgments of the many wonderful mercies which my solitary condition was attended with, and without which it might have been infinitely more miserable. I gave humble and hearty thanks, that God had been pleased to discover to me even that it was possible I might be more happy in this solitary condition than I should have been in a liberty of society, and in all the pleasures of the world—that he could fully make up to me the deficiencies of my solitary state, and the want of human society, by his presence and the communication of his grace to my soul, supporting, comforting, and encouraging me to depend upon his providence here, and hope for his eternal presence hereafter.

It was now that I began sensibly to feel how much more happy the life I now led was, with all its miserable circumstances, than the wicked, cursed, abominable life I led all the past part of my days: and now, having changed both my sorrows and my joys, my very desires altered, my affections changed their gust, and my delights were perfectly new from what they were at my first coming, or, indeed, for the two years past.

Before, as I walked about, either on my hunting or for viewing the country, the anguish of my soul at my condition would break out upon me on a sudden, and my very heart would die within me to think of the woods, the mountains, the deserts I was in; and how I was a prisoner, locked up with the eternal bars and bolts of the ocean, in an uninhabited wilderness, without redemption. In the midst of the greatest composures of my mind, this would break out upon me like a storm, and made me wring my hands, and weep like a child. Sometimes it would take me in the middle of my work, and I would immediately sit down and sigh, and look upon the ground for an hour or two together, and this was still worse to me; for if I could burst out into tears, or vent myself by words, it would go off; and the grief, having exhausted itself, would abate.

But now I began to exercise myself with new thoughts—I daily read the word of God, and applied all the comforts of it to my present state. One morning, being very sad, I opened the Bible upon these words, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee!” Immediately it occurred, that these words were to me; why else should they be directed in such a manner, just at the moment when I was mourning over my condition, as one forsaken of God and man? “Well then,” said I, “if God does not forsake me, of what ill consequence can it be, or what matters it though the world should all forsake me; seeing, on the other hand, if I had all the world, and should lose the favour and blessing of God, there would be no comparison in the loss?”

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