436 MORE POT-POURRI 



should be ; and I only feel it sometimes, and perhaps even 

 that won't last. 



This is good-bye, dear reader. Collecting these notes 

 has given me pleasure and also cost me trouble. I can- 

 not do better than close them by quoting what were 

 almost the last lines ever written by my kind friend and 

 brother-in-law, Owen Meredith. I owe him as large a 

 debt of gratitude as one human being can owe another. 

 It was due to his friendly advice and his kind encourage- 

 ment that my mind was saved from that sense of failure 

 and disappointment so common to women, at any rate 

 in middle life. He taught me how all ages have their 

 advantages, and gave me courage to go on learning even 

 to the end. He always seemed able to see the line of 

 the other shore with a brightness not granted to me : 



My songs flit away on the wing : 



They are fledged with a smile or a sigh : 



And away with the songs that I sing 

 Flit my joys, and my sorrows, and I. 



For time, as it is, cannot stay : 



Nor again, as it was, can it be : 

 Disappearing and passing away 



Are the world, and the ages, and we. 



Gone, even before we can go, 



Is our past, with its passions forgot, 



The dry tears of its wept-away woe, 

 And its laughters that gladden us not. 



The builder of heaven and of earth 



Is our own fickle fugitive breath : 

 As it comes in the moment of birth, 



So it goes in the moment of death. 



As the years were before we began, 



Shall the years be when we are no more : 

 And between them the years of a man 



A e as waves the wind drives to the shore. 



