A stable, changeless state, 'twere cause indeed to weep.

The gay will laugh When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and each one as before will chase His favourite phantom; yet all these shall leave Their mirth and their employments, and shall come, And make their bed with thee.

The hushed winds their Sabbath keep.

Difficulty, my brethren, is the nurse of greatness - a harsh nurse, who roughly rocks her foster children into strength and athletic proportion.

And suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief, and the year smiles as it draws near its death.

The air was fragrant with a thousand trodden aromatic herbs, with fields of lavender, and with the brightest roses blushing in tufts all over the meadows.

Much has seen said of the wisdom of old age. Old age is wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is wise in declining new enterprises, for it has not the power nor the time to execute them; wise in shrinking from difficulty, for it has not the strength to overcome it; wise in avoiding danger, for it lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by which dangers are parried and converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind at large, by whom new enterprises must be undertaken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted.