His mind was destitute of that dread which has been erroneously decried as if it were nothing higher than a man's animal care for his own skin: that … - George Eliot

O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again In minds made better by their presence; live In pulses stirred to generosity, In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn For miserable aims that end with self, In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, And with their mild persistence urge men's search To vaster issues.

Every limit is a beginning as well as an ending. Who can quit young lives after being long in company with them, and not desire to know what befell them in their after-years? For the fragment of a life, however typical, is not the sample of an even web: promises may not be kept, and an ardent outset may be followed by declension; latent powers may find their long-waited opportunity; a past error may urge a grand retrieval.

Then, as the metal shapes more various grew, And, hurled upon each other, resonance drew, Each gave new tones, the revelations dim Of some external soul that spoke for him: The hollow vessel's clang, the clash, the boom, Like light that makes wide spiritual room And skyey spaces in the spaceless thought, To Jubal such enlarged passion brought, That love, hope, rage, and all experience, Were fused in vaster being, fetching thence Concords and discords, cadences and cries That seemed from some world-shrouded soul-to rise, Some rapture more intense, some mightier rage, Some living sea that burst the bounds of man's brief age.