So be my passing! My task accomplished and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gathered in the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death.

Open your heart and take us in, Love-love and me.

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

[T]hey stretch you on a table. Then they bid you close your eyelids, And they mask you with a napkin, And the anæsthetic reaches Hot and subtle through your being.

Pointed criticism, if accurate, often gives the artist an inner sense of relief. The criticism that damages is that which disparages, dismisses, ridicules, or condemns.

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

Life - life - let there be life!