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LXXXVII



Farewell! thou art too dear for my possessing,

And like enough thou know\'st thy estimate,

The charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;

My bonds in thee are all determinate.

For how do I hold thee but by thy granting?

And for that riches where is my deserving?

The cause of this fair gift in me is wanting,

And so my patent back again is swerving.

Thy self thou gav\'st, thy own worth then not knowing,

Or me to whom thou gav\'st it, else mistaking;

So thy great gift, upon misprision growing,

Comes home again, on better judgement making.

  Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth flatter,

  In sleep a king, but waking no such matter.

 	--William Shakespeare

As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug\'s game. No honest poet can ever
feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for
nothing.
T. S. Eliot

Whatever time I\'ve got left now belongs to the Big Fella Upstairs.
Ronald Reagan