The young men strained upon the crank To wring the last reluctant inch. They laughed together, fair and frank, And threw their loins across the winch. - Vita Sackville-West

...his diminishing honours trailing away behind him like the tail of a comet - he had drooped in his chair after dinner, and the accumulation of ninety years had receded abruptly into history.

And, – mark, – I do care so satisfactorily for the few people that matter to me. (For Virginia? Oh dear me YES, for Virginia.)

And what have I to give my friends in the last resort? An awkwardness, a shyness, and a scrap, No thing that's truly me, a bootless waste, A waste of myself and them, for my life is mine And theirs presumably theirs, and cannot touch.