How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breathe were life.

I stood on a tower in the wet, And New Year and Old Year met, And winds were roaring and blowing: And I said, "O years, that meet in tears, Have ye aught that is worth the knowing? Science enough and exploring, Wanderers coming and going, Matter enough for deploring, But aught that is worth the knowing?

And what delights can equal those That stir the spirit's inner deeps, When one that loves but knows not, reaps A truth from one that loves and knows?

This world was once a fluid haze of light, Till toward the centre set the starry tides, And eddied into suns, that wheeling cast The planets: then the monster, then the man.

Because right is right, to follow right Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence.

She hath no loyal knight and true, The Lady of Shalott.

So many worlds, so much to do, so little done, such things to be.