Out of Ireland have we come, great hatred, little room, maimed us at the start. I carry from my mother's womb a fanatic heart.

Hearts with one purpose alone/Through summer and winter seem/Enchanted to a stone/To trouble the living stream.

Whence had they come The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome? What sacred drama through her body heaved When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?

Every conquering temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before.

We cannot doubt that barbaric people receive such influences more visibly and obviously, and in all likelihood more easily and fully than we do, for our life in cities, which deafens or kills the passive meditative life, and our education that enlarges the separated, self-moving mind, have made our souls less sensitive.

I pray-for fashion's word is out And prayer comes round again- That I may seem, though I die old, A foolish, passionate man.

The years like great black oxen tread the world, and God, the herdsman goads them on behind, and I am broken by their passing feet.