What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns? - Alfred Tennyson

All the windy ways of men Are but dust that rises up, And is lightly laid again.

With blackest moss the flower plots Were thickly crusted, one and all; The rusted nails fell from the knots That held the pear to the gable wall. The broken sheds looked sad and strange: Unlifted was the clinking latch; Weeded and worn the ancient thatch Upon the lonely moated grange. She only said, "My life is dreary, He cometh not," she said; She said, "I am aweary, aweary, I would that I were dead!'

Not once or twice in our fair island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory.