The heavens and earth stay as they were; my heart Beats as it beat: the truth remains the truth. - Robert Browning

When the liquor's out, why clink the cannikin?

The sad rhyme of the men who proudly clung
To their first fault, and withered in their pride.

Well, are we demigods or merely clay?
Is success still attendant on desert?
Is this, we live on, heaven and the final state,
Or earth which means probation to the end?
Why claim escape from man's predestined lot
Of being beaten and baffled? — God's decree,
In which I, bowing bruised head, acquiesce.