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Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!No hungry generations tread thee down;The voice I hear this passing night was heardIn ancient days by emperor and clown:Perhaps the self-same song that found a pathThrough the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,She stood in tears amid the alien corn;The same that oft-times hathCharm’d magic casements, opening on the foamOf perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Poor Wakefield! little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this great world. No mortal eye but mine has traced thee. Go quietly to thy bed, foolish man, and on the morrow, if thou wilt be wise, get thee home to good Mrs. Wakefield and tell her the truth. Remove not thyself even for a little week from thy place in her chaste bosom. Were she for a single moment to deem thee dead or lost or lastingly divided from her, thou wouldst be woefully conscious of a change in thy true wife for ever after. It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections—not that they gape so long and wide, but so quickly close again.

If ever I saw anything like actual migration, it was last Michaelmas-day. I was travelling, and out early in the morning: at first there was a vast fog; but, by the time that I was got seven or eight miles from home towards the coast, the sun broke out into a delicate warm day. We were then on a large heath or common, and I could discern, as the mist began to break away, great numbers of swallows (hirundines rusticae) clustering on the stinted shrubs and bushes, as if they had roosted there all night. As soon as the air became clear and pleasant they all were on the wing at once; and, by a placid and easy flight, proceeded on southward towards the sea: after this I did not see any more flocks, only now and then a straggler.

Defeat, my Defeat, my shining sword and shield,In your eyes I have readThat to be enthroned is to be enslaved,And to be understood is to be leveled down,And to be grasped is but to reach one’s fullnessAnd like a ripe fruit to fall and be consumed.Defeat, my Defeat, my bold companion,You shall hear my songs and my cries and my silences,And none but you shall speak to me of the beating of wings,And urging of seas,And of mountains that burn in the night,And you alone shall climb my steep and rocky soul.

Nor wilt thou rest forever, weary heart.The last illusion is destroyed,That I eternal thought. Destroyed!I feel all hope and all desire depart,For life and its deceitful joys.Forever rest! Enough! Thy throbbings cease!Naught can requite thy miseries;Nor is earth worthy of thy sighs.Life is a bitter, weary load,The world a slough. And now, repose!Despair no more, but find in DeathThe only boon Fate on our race bestows!

Sun Tzǔ said: In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to capture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them.