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.
We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands...searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living...for the integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences...Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.
The splendors of the firmament of time May be eclipsed, but are extinguished not; Like stars to their appointed height they climb And death is a low mist which cannot blot The brightness it may veil.
Reality does not easily give up meaning; it's the biographer's job to clobber it into submission. You're meant not only to tame it but to extract substance, to identify cause and axiomatic effect. You subsist on the tactical omissions, the hollow words, the oddly unconnected dots.
Ambition makes the same mistake concerning power that avarice makes concerning wealth. She begins by accumulating power as a means to happiness, and she finishes by continuing to accumulate it as an end.
Public behavior is merely private character writ large.
Innocence does not find near so much protection as guilt.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.