It was my first meeting with a philosophy that confirmed my vague speculations and seemed at once logical and boundless.

Ecstasy is from the contemplation of things vaster than the individual and imperfectly seen perhaps, by all those that still live.

I call on those that call me son, Grandson, or great-grandson, On uncles, aunts, great-uncles or great-aunts, To judge what I have done. Have I, that put it into words, Spoilt what old loins have sent?

Things said or done long years ago Or things I did not do or say But thought that I might say or do, Weigh me down, and not a day But something is recalled, My conscience or my vanity appalled.

Consume my heart away, sick with desire And fastened to a dying animal It knows not what it is, and gather me Into the artifice of eternity.

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray, I hear it in the deep heart's core.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick