One must, I think, be struck more and more the longer one lives, to find how much in our present society a man's life of each day depends for its sol… - Matthew Arnold

Is it so small a thing
To have enjoy'd the sun,
To have liv'd light in the spring,
To have lov'd, to have thought, to have done;
To have advanc'd true friends, and beat down baffling foes;

That we must feign a bliss
Of doubtful future date,
And while we dream on this
Lose our present state,
And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose?

Empedocles on Etna: Act I, Scene II

Hither and thither spins The wind-borne mirroring soul, A thousand glimpses wins, And never sees a whole.

And you, ye stars,
Who slowly begin to marshal,
As of old, the fields of heaven,
Your distant, melancholy lines!
Have you, too, survived yourselves?
Are you, too, what I fear to become?
You, too, once lived;
You, too, moved joyfully
Among august companions,
In an older world, peopled by Gods,
In a mightier order,
The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven.
But now, ye kindle
Your lonely, cold-shining lights,
Unwilling lingerers
In the heavenly wilderness,
For a younger, ignoble world;
And renew, by necessity,
Night after night your courses,
In echoing, unneared silence,
Above a race you know not — Uncaring and undelighted,
Without friend and without home;
Weary like us, though not
Weary with our weariness.