_The Professor at the Breakfast Table_, O. W. HOLMES.
"Sunset and evening star, And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea.
"But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep Turns again home.
"Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell When I embark;
"For, tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crost the bar."
"If the immediate life after death be only sleep, and the spirit between this life and the next should be folded like a flower in a night slumber, then the remembrance of the past might remain, as the smell and colour do in the sleeping flower; and in that case the memory of our love would last as true, and would live pure and whole within the spirit of my friend until after it was unfolded at the breaking of the morn, when the sleep was over."
"Life! I know not what thou art, But know that thou and I must part; And when, or how, or where we met, I own to me's a secret yet.
"Life! we have been long together, Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear; Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;-- Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time; Say not Good Night, but in some brighter clime Bid me Good Morning!"
"It is dangerous to abandon oneself to the luxury of grief; it deprives one of courage, and even of the wish for recovery."
"Its way of suffering is the witness which a soul bears to itself."
"We must bury our dead joys And live above them with a living world."
"Sorrow brings also a temptation to exactingness. It may be that friends are very helpful to us. Let us take care that no selfishness mingles with our love for their companionship, with our claims for their sympathy.
"What, for the time, at any rate, is all the world to us, can only be a small part of another's life.
"And one must struggle, as time goes on, to take what comes in one's way of sympathy, of kindness, of companionship, but one must also try never to exact sympathy, to allow ourselves to feel neglected, or slighted, or forgotten.