This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks, Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight, Stand like Druids of eld, with voices sad and prophetic, Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest.

O thou sculptor, painter, poet! Take this lesson to thy heart: That is best which lieth nearest; Shape from that thy work of art.

The Helicon of too many poets is not a hill crowned with sunshine and visited by the Muses and the Graces, but an old, mouldering house, full of gloom and haunted by ghosts.

To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be.

Time, like a preacher in the days of the Puritans, turned the hour-glass on his high pulpit, the church belfry.

It is autumn; not without But within me is the cold. Youth and spring are all about; It is I that have grown old.

Let us, then, be what we are; speak what we think; and in all things keep ourselves loyal to truth.