I hold it true, whate’er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; ‘tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Maybe the wildest dreams are but the needful preludes of the truth. Words, like nature, half reveal and half conceal the soul within. Oh yet we trust that somehow good will be the final goal of ill! Old age hath yet his honor and his toil. Death closes all; but something ere the end, Some work of noble note, may yet be done, Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods. Ring in the valiant man and free the larger heart, the kindlier hand! Ring out the darkness of the land, ring in the Christ that is to be! Ring out the grief that saps the mind, for those that were here we see no more. Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control - these three alone lead life to sovereign power. There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds. 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. | 
