I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.

Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Or ever the knightly years were gone, with the old world to the grave, I was a King in Babylon and you were a Christian Slave. I saw, I took, I cast you by, I bent and broke your pride... And a myriad suns have set and shone, since then upon the grave, Decreed by the King in Babylon, to her that had been his slave. The pride I trampled is now my scathe, for it tramples me again. The old remnant lasts like death for you love, yet you refrain. I break my heart on your hard unfaith, and I break my heart in vain.

It is the artist's function not to copy but to synthesise: to eliminate from that gross confusion of actuality which is his raw material whatever is accidental, idle, irrelevant, and select for perpetuation that only which is appropriate and immortal.

beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade

This is the merit and distinction of art: to be more real than reality, to be not nature but nature's essence.

I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.