My father was an angry and impatient teacher and flung the reading book at my head.

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.

but one loses, as one grows older, something of the lightness of one's dreams; one begins to take life up in both hands, and to care more for the fruit than the flower, and that is no great loss perhaps.

My wretched dragon is perplexed.

Though I am old with wandering Through hollow lands and hilly lands, I will find out where she has gone, And kiss her lips and take her hands; And walk among long dappled grass, And pluck till time and times are done The silver apples of the moon, The golden apples of the sun.

We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.

God guard me from those thoughts men think In the mind alone.