Our wills are ours, to make them thine. - Alfred Tennyson

Love's arms were wreathed about the neck of Hope, And Hope kiss'd Love, and Love drew in her breath In that close kiss and drank her whisper'd tales. They said that Love would die when Hope was gone. And Love mourn'd long, and sorrow'd after Hope; At last she sought out Memory, and they trod The same old paths where Love had walked with Hope, And Memory fed the soul of Love with tears.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breath were life. Life piled on life Were all too little, and of one to me Little remains: but every hour is saved From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were For some three suns to store and hoard myself, And this gray spirit yearning in desire To follow knowledge like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

And I, the last, go forth companionless,
And the days darken round me, and the years,
Among new men, strange faces, other minds.