A Fair Request Should Be Followed By

All Your Renown Is Like The Summer Flower That Blooms And Dies; Because The Sunny Glow Which Brings It Forth, Soon Slays With Parching Power.

The Splendors That Belong Unto The Fame Of Earth Are But A Wind, That In The Same Direction Lasts Not Long.

Those Ancients Who In Poetry Presented The Golden Age, Who Sang Its Happy State, Perhaps, In Their Parnassus, Dreamt This Place. Here, Mankind's Root Was Innocent; And Here Were Every Fruit And Never-ending Spring; These Streams--the Nectar Of Which Poets Sing.

As The Geometer Intently Seeks To Square The Circle, But He Cannot Reach, Through Thought On Thought, The Principle He Needs, So I Searched That Strange Sight.

I Found Myself Within A Forest Dark, For The Straightfoward Pathway Had Been Lost. Ah Me! How Hard A Thing Is To Say, What Was This Forest Savage, Rough, And Stern, Which In The Very Thought Renews The Fear. So Bitter Is It, Death Is Little More.