If Only I Could So

It's An Odd Feeling-farewell-there Is Some Envy In It. Men Go Off To Be Tested For Courage And If We're Tested At All, It's For Patience, For Doing Without, For How Well We Can Endure Loneliness.

When We Are Young The Idea Of Death Or Failure Is Intolerable To Us; Even The Possibility Of Ridicule We Cannot Bear. But We Have Also An Unconquerable Faith In Our Own Stars, And In The Impossibility Of Anything Venturing To Go Against Us. As We Grow Old We Slowly Come To Believe That Everything Will Turn Out Badly For Us, And That Failure Is In The Nature Of Things, But Then We Do Not Much Mind What Happens To Us One Way Or The Other. In This Way A Balance Is Obtained.

Who Tells A Finer Tale Than Any Of Us. Silence Does.

The Pleasure Of The True Dreamer Does Not Lie In The Substance Of The Dream, But In This: That There Things Happen Without Any Interference From His Side, And Altogether Outside His Control.

You Must Not Think That I Feel, In Spite Of It Having Ended In Such Defeat, That My "life Has Been Wasted" Here, Or That I Would Exchange It With That Of Anyone I Know.