There is nothing so unpardonable as to consent to a senseless, aimless, purposeless life.

A minute of success pays for years of failure.

How well I know what I mean to do When the long dark Autumn evenings come, And where, my soul, is thy pleasant hue? With the music of all thy voices, dumb In life’s November too! I shall be found by the fire, suppose, O’er a great wise book as beseemeth age, While the shutters flap as the cross-wind blows, And I turn the page, and I turn the page, Not verse now, only prose!

Might she have loved me? just as well She might have hated, who can tell!

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so; life's business being just the terrible choice.

I hear you reproach, "But delay was best, For their end was a crime." Oh, a crime will do As well, I reply, to serve for a test As a virtue golden through and through, Sufficient to vindicate itself And prove its worth at a moment's view! . . . . . . Let a man contend to the uttermost For his life's set prize, be it what it will! The counter our lovers staked was lost As surely as if it were lawful coin; And the sin I impute to each frustrate ghost Is-the unlit lamp and the ungirt loin, Though the end in sight was a vice, I say.

I do what many dream of, all their lives