I Never Did A Single Wise Thing

Ah What Avails The Sceptred Race, Ah What The Form Divine! What Every Virtue, Every Grace! Rose Aylmer, All Were Thine. Rose Aylmer, Whom These Wakeful Eyes May Weep, But Never See, A Night Of Memories And Of Sighs I Consecrate To Thee.

But I Have Sinuous Shells Of Pearly Hue Within, And They That Lustre Have Imbibed In The Sun's Palace-porch, Where When Unyoked Chariot-wheel Stands Midway In The Wave: Shake One, And It Awakens; Then Apply Its Polisht Lips To Your Attentive Ear, And It Remembers Its August Abodes, And Murmurs As The Ocean Murmurs There.

States, Like Men, Have Their Growth, Their Manhood, Their Decrepitude, Their Decay.

Two Evils, Of Almost Equal Weight, May Befall The Man Of Erudition; Never To Be Listened To, And To Be Listened To Always.

Let Me Take Up Your Metaphor. Friendship Is A Vase, Which, When It Is Flawed By Heat Or Violence Or Accident, May As Well Be Broken At Once; It Can Never Be Trusted After. The More Graceful And Ornamental It Was, The More Clearly Do We Discern The Hopelessness Of Restoring It To Its Former State. Coarse Stones, If They Are Fractured, May Be Cemented Again; Precious Stones, Never.