No life Can be pure in its purpose and strong in its strife And all life not be purer and stronger thereby. - Robert Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Earl of Lytton

I loved you ere I knew you: know you now,
And, having known you, love you better still.

'Twas a hand
White, delicate, dimpled, warm, languid, and bland.
The hand of a woman is often, in youth, Somewhat rough, somewhat red, somewhat graceless in truth;
Does its beauty refine, as its pulses grow calm,
Or as sorrow has cross'd the life-line in its palm.

Unseen hands delay
The coming of what seems close in ken,
And, contrary, the moment when we say
"'Twill never come!" comes on us even then.