Mezzo Cammin

"Half of my life is gone, and I have let
   The years slip from me and have not fulfilled
   The aspiration of my youth, to build
   Some tower of song with lofty parapet.
Not indolence, nor pleasure, nor the fret
   Of restless passions that would not be stilled,
   But sorrow, and a care that almost killed,
   Kept me from what I may accomplish yet;
Though, half-way up the hill, I see the Past
   Lying beneath me with its sounds and sights,—
   A city in the twilight dim and vast,
With smoking roofs, soft bells, and gleaming lights,—
   And hear above me on the autumnal blast
   The cataract of Death far thundering from the heights."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

So I am officially retired,  from working, not blogging.

"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

He chortled in his joy.

"This is the life I wanted, and could never see.

For almost twenty years I thought that it was enough:

That real happiness was either unreal, or lost, or endless,

And that remembrance was as close to it as I could ever come.

And I believed that deep in the past, buried in my heart

Beyond the depth of sight, there was a kingdom of peace.

And so I never imagined that when peace would finally come

It would be on a summer evening, a few blocks away from home

In a small suburban park, with some children playing aimlessly

In an endless light, and a lake shining in the distance."

from In the Park

by John Koethe

“And beyond the Wild Wood again. he asked:

Where its all dim and blue, and one sees what may

be hills or perhaps they mayn t, and something like

the smoke of towns, or is it only cloud-drift.

Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,"

said the Rat."And that's something that doesn't matter,

either to you or to me. I've never been there,

and I'm never going' nor you either, if you've got any

sense at all.”

from The Wind in the Willows

by Kenneth Grahame