So be my passing! My task accomplished and the long day done, My wages taken, and in my heart Some late lark singing, Let me be gathered in the quiet west, The sundown splendid and serene, Death.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the acceptance of death as a peaceful conclusion to life.
William Ernest Henley's quote contemplates the inevitability of death, expressing a desire for a serene and beautiful end to life's journey. It captures the notion of finding peace in the transition from life to death, suggesting that, much like a long day that comes to a close, one can accept their fate with grace and tranquility.
In practice
In a eulogy, one might say, 'As Henley put it, let us find peace in the quiet west and accept the beauty of life's end.'
It is the artist's function not to copy but to synthesise: to eliminate from that gross confusion of actuality which is his raw material whatever is accidental, idle, irrelevant, and select for perpetuation that only which is appropriate and immortal.
Were I so tall as to reach the pole or grasp the ocean at a span, I must be measured by my soul. The mind is the standard of the man.
Here is the ghost _x000D_ _x000D_ Of a summer that lived for us, _x000D_ _x000D_ Ere is a promise _x000D_ _x000D_ Of summer to be.
I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul.
Oh what idiots we have all been, this is just as it must be
Thought is essentially practical in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action, no change a progress.
Every day I go to my study and sit at my desk and put the computer on. At that moment, I have to open the door. It's a big, heavy door. You have to go into the Other Room. Metaphorically, of course. And you have to come back to this side of the room. And you have to shut the door.
What is still more to our shame as civilized Christians, we debauch their morals already too prone to vice, and we introduce among them wants and perhaps disease which they never before knew and which serve only to disturb that happy tranquility which they and their forefathers enjoyed. If anyone denies the truth of this assertion, let him tell me what the natives of the whole extent of America have gained by the commerce they have had with Europeans.
One, with God, is always a majority, but many a martyr has been burned at the stake while the votes were being counted.
Racism is a much more clandestine, much more hidden kind of phenomenon, but at the same time it's perhaps far more terrible than it's ever been.
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