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CXXV



Were\'t aught to me I bore the canopy,

With my extern the outward honouring,

Or laid great bases for eternity,

Which proves more short than waste or ruining?

Have I not seen dwellers on form and favour

Lose all and more by paying too much rent

For compound sweet; forgoing simple savour,

Pitiful thrivers, in their gazing spent?

No; let me be obsequious in thy heart,

And take thou my oblation, poor but free,

Which is not mix\'d with seconds, knows no art,

But mutual render, only me for thee.

  Hence, thou suborned informer! a true soul

  When most impeach\'d, stands least in thy control.

 	--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

We have so many people who can\'t see a fat man standing beside a thin one
without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking
advantage of the thin one!
Ronald Reagan