I Am No Bird And No Net

For I Too Liked Reading, Thought Of A Frivolous And Childish Kind; I Could Not Digest Or Comprehend The Serious Or Substantial.

If You Are Cast In A Different Mould To The Majority, It Is No Merit Of Yours: Nature Did It.

You, Jane, I Must Have You For My Own--entirely My Own.

When His First-born Was Put Into His Arms, He Could See That The Boy Had Inherited His Own Eyes, As They Once Were - Large, Brilliant, And Black.

If There Are Words And Wrongs Like Knives, Whose Deep Inflicted Lacerations Never Heal - Cutting Injuries And Insults Of Serrated And Poison-dripping Edge - So, Too, There Are Consolations Of Tone Too Fine For The Ear Not Fondly And For Ever To Retain Their Echo: Caressing Kindnesses - Loved, Lingered Over Through A Whole Life, Recalled With Unfaded Tenderness, And Answering The Call With Undimmed Shine, Out Of That Raven Cloud Foreshadowing Death Himself.