Lovers lying two and two Ask not whom they sleep beside, And the bridegroom all night through Never turns him to the bride.

I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist); and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.

I sought them far and found them, The sure, the straight, the brave, The hearts I lost my own to, The souls I could not save They braced their belts about them, They crossed in ships the sea, They sought and found six feet of ground, And there they died for me.

Ten thousand times I've done my best and all's to do again.

Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young.

Now hollow fires burn out to black, And lights are guttering low: Square your shoulders, lift your pack And leave your friends and go.

To justify God's ways to man.