I am dying, but without expectation of a speedy release. Is it not strange that very recently by-gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of Youth and Hope - those twin realities of this phantom world! I do not add Love, - for what is Love but Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one? I say realities; for reality is a thing of degrees, from the Iliad to a dream.

I take unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly cheerfulness is especially delicious to me in my old age. How exquisitely tender he is, and yet how perfectly fr…

All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair - The bees are stirring - birds are on the wing - And WINTER slumbering in the open air, Wears on his smiling …

I am by the law of my nature a reasoner. A person who should suppose I meant by that word, an arguer, would not only not understand me, but would understand th…

Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay, Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away, Gone from the earth to a better land I know, I hear their g…

They carry back bright to the coiner the mintage of man, The lads that will die in their glory and never be old.

Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case. Now what?