I seem but a dead man held on end To sink down soon.... O you could not know That such swift fleeing No soul foreseeing — Not even I — would undo me … - Thomas Hardy

People say I must be cold–natured — sexless — on account of it. But I won’t have it! Some of the most passionately erotic poets have been the most self–contained in their daily lives.

but she remained more or less and ideal character, about whose form he began to weave curious and fantastic day-dreams.

The yard was a little centre of regeneration. Here, with keen edges and smooth curves, were forms in the exact likeness of those he had seen abraded and time-eaten on the walls. These were the ideas in modern prose which the lichened colleges presented in old poetry. Even some of those antiques might have been called prose when they were new. They had done nothing but wait, and had become poetical. How easy to the smallest building; how impossible to most men.