I Have Great Hopes That We Shall

Ah, Nut-brown Partridges! Ah, Brilliant Pheasants! And Ah, Ye Poachers!--'tis No Sport For Peasants.

Earth! Render Back From Out Thy Breast A Remnant Of Our Spartan Dead! Of The Three Hundred Grant But Three, To Make A New Thermopylæ!

My Slumbers--if I Slumber--are Not Sleep, But A Continuance Of Enduring Thought, Which Then I Can Resist Not: In My Heart There Is A Vigil, And These Eyes But Close To Look Within; And Yet I Live, And Bear The Aspect And The Form Of Breathing Men.

...and These Vicissitudes Come Best In Youth; For When They Happen At A Riper Age, People Are Apt To Blame The Fates, Forsooth, And Wonder Providence Is Not More Sage. Adversity Is The First Path To Truth: He Who Hath Proved War, Storm, Or Woman's Rage, Whether His Winters Be Eighteen Or Eighty, Has Won Experience Which Is Deem'd So Weighty.

Nothing So Difficult As A Beginning In Poesy, Unless Perhaps The End.