A Ruffled Mind Makes A Restless Pillow.

Her Coming Was My Hope Each Day, Her Parting Was My Pain; The Chance That Did Her Steps Delay Was Ice In Every Vein.

I Was No Pope - I Could Not Boast Infallibility.

Self Abandoned, Relaxed And Effortless, I Seemed To Have Laid Me Down In The Dried-up Bed Of A Great River; I Heard A Flood Loosened In Remote Mountains, I Felt The Torrent Come; To Rise I Had No Will, To Flee I Had No Strength.

If There Are Words And Wrongs Like Knives, Whose Deep Inflicted Lacerations Never Heal - Cutting Injuries And Insults Of Serrated And Poison-dripping Edge - So, Too, There Are Consolations Of Tone Too Fine For The Ear Not Fondly And For Ever To Retain Their Echo: Caressing Kindnesses - Loved, Lingered Over Through A Whole Life, Recalled With Unfaded Tenderness, And Answering The Call With Undimmed Shine, Out Of That Raven Cloud Foreshadowing Death Himself.

Now It Is Not Everybody, Even Amongst Our Respected Friends And Esteemed Acquaintance, Whom We Like To Have Near Us, Whom We Like To Watch Us, To Wait On Us, To Approach Us With The Proximity Of A Nurse To A Patient. It Is Not Every Friend Whose Eye Is A Light In A Sickroom, Whose Presence Is There A Solace.