The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a false sorrow.

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.

October turned my maple's leaves to gold; The most are gone now; here and there one lingers: Soon these will slip from the twigs' weak hold, Like coins between a dying miser's fingers.

Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.

So I sit there kicked my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching a morbid blue-bottle fly attempt to commit suicide by butting his head against the windowpane.

When friends are at your hearthside met, Sweet courtesy has done its most If you have made each guest forget That he himself is not the host.

Those forms we fancy shadows, those strange lights That flash on dank morasses, the quick wind That smites us by the roadside—are the Night's Innumerable children. Unconfined By shroud or coffin, disembodied souls, Uneasy spirits, steal into the air From festering graveyards when the curfew tolls At the day's death... And wheresoever murders have been done, In stately palaces or lonesome woods, Where'er a soul has sold itself and lost Its high inheritance, there, hovering, broods Some sad, invisible, accurséd Ghost!