I Strove With None; For None Was

I Strove With None, For None Was Worth My Strife. Nature I Loved And, Next To Nature, Art: I Warm'd Both Hands Before The Fire Of Life; It Sinks, And I Am Ready To Depart.

There Is A Gravity Which Is Not Austere Nor Captious, Which Belongs Not To Melancholy Nor Dwells In Contraction Of Heart: But Arises From Tenderness And Hangs Upon Reflection.

Prose On Certain Occasions Can Bear A Great Deal Of Poetry; On The Other Hand, Poetry Sinks And Swoons Under A Moderate Weight Of Prose.

To My Ninth Decade I Have Totter'd On, And No Soft Arm Bends Now My Steps To Steady; She, Who Once Led Me Where She Would, Is Gone, So When He Calls Me, Death Shall Find Me Ready.

Be Assured That, Although Men Of Eminent Genius Have Been Guilty Of All Other Vices, None Worthy Of More Than A Secondary Name Has Ever Been A Gamester. Either An Excess Of Avarice Or A Deficiency Of What, In Physics, Is Called Excitability, Is The Cause Of It; Neither Of Which Can Exist In The Same Bosom With Genius, With Patriotism, Or With Virtue.