And these, all labouring for a lord, Eat not the fruit of their own hands: Which is the heaviest of all plagues, To that man's mind, who understands.… - Matthew Arnold

Wordsworth has gone from us — and ye, Ah, may ye feel his voice as we! He too upon a wintry clime Had fallen — on this iron time Of doubts, disputes, distractions, fears.

"Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie,
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.
We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hill-side — And then come back down.
Singing: "There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she!
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.

(from poem 'The Forsaken Merman')

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 solidity and value upon whether he reads during that day, and far more still on what he reads during it.