A Sharp Spear Needs No Polish.

It Is A Well-known Fact That Very Often, Putting The Period Of Boyhood Out Of The Argument, The Older We Grow The More Cynical And Hardened We Become; Indeed, Many Of Us Are Only Saved By Timely Death From Moral Petrification, If Not From Moral Corruption.

I Am Not A Nervous Man In A General Way, And Very Little Troubled With Superstitions, Of Which I Have Lived To See The Folly.

As For The Girl, Since She Is Well Favoured, She Shall Brew The King's Beer, And Be Numbered Amongst The King's Wives-unless, Indeed, He Is Pleased To Give Her To Me.

And Now Let Us Love And Take That Which Is Given Us, And Be Happy; For In The Grave There Is No Love And No Warmth, Nor Any Touching Of The Lips. Nothing Perchance, Or Perchance But Bitter Memories Of What Might Have Been.

Strange Are The Pictures Of The Future That Mankind Can Thus Draw With This Brush Of Faith And These Many-coloured Pigments Of The Imagination! Strange, Too, That No One Of Them Tallies With Another!