“Come grow old with me. The best is yet to be.”

“Love betters what is best”

“My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky:So was it when my life began; So is it now I am a man; So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die!The Child is father of the Man;And I could wish my days to beBound each to each by natural piety.”

“This son of his old age was yet more dear— Less from instinctive tenderness, the same Fond spirit that blindly works in the blood of all— 145Than that a child, more than all other gifts That earth can offer to declining man, Brings hope with it, and forward-looking thoughts, And stirrings of inquietude, when they By tendency of nature needs must fail.”

“How does the meadow-flower its bloom unfold?Because the lovely little flower is freeDown to its root, and in that freedom bold.”

“For oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude”

“Getting and spending we lay waste our powers.”