Fate

“How would he feel if everything had happened differently, if he had triumphed over the prison authorities and the Warleggans and disease and was not bereaved and beaten, light-headed and tired to death? He would have been asleep and safe from those thoughts.”
― Winston Graham, Demelza

“Come then, pure hands, and bear the head
That sleeps or wears the mask of sleep,
And come, whatever loves to weep,
And hear the ritual of the dead.”
― Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam

“Lo, as a dove when up she springs
To bear thro' Heaven a tale of woe,
Some dolorous message knit below
The wild pulsation of her wings;

Like her I go; I cannot say;
I leave this mortal ark behind,
A weight of nerves without a mind,
And leave the cliffs, and haste away

O'er ocean-mirrors rounded large,
And reach the glow of southern skies,
And see the sails at distance rise,
And linger weeping on the merge,

And saying; 'comes he thus, my friend?
Is this the end of all my care?'
And circle moaning in the air:
'Is this the end? Is this the end?'

And forward dart again, and play
About the prow, and back return
To where the body sits, and learn,
That I have been an hour away.”
― Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam

“But thou and I have shaken hands,
Till growing winters lay me low;
My paths are in the fields I know,
And thine in undiscover'd lands.”
― Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam