So Softly Death Succeeded Life In Her,

What, Start At This! When Sixty Years Have Spread. Their Grey Experience O'er Thy Hoary Head? Is This The All Observing Age Could Gain? Or Hast Thou Known The World So Long In Vain?

What Judgment I Had Increases Rather Than Diminishes; And Thoughts, Such As They Are, Come Crowding In So Fast Upon Me, That My Only Difficulty Is To Choose Or Reject; To Run Them Into Verse Or To Give Them The Other Harmony Of Prose.

Imagining Is In Itself The Very Height And Life Of Poetry, Which, By A Kind Of Enthusiasm Or Extraordinary Emotion Of The Soul, Makes It Seem To Us That We Behold Those Things Which The Poet Paints.

'tis A Good Thing To Laugh At Any Rate; And If A Straw Can Tickle A Man, It Is An Instrument Of Happiness.

How Happy The Lover, How Easy His Chain, How Pleasing His Pain, How Sweet To Discover He Sighs Not In Vain.