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Some say the world will end in fire,

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if it had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To say that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.



- Robert Frost

Once on a time, the ancient legends tell,

Truth, rising from the bottom of her well,

Looked on the world, but, hearing how it lied,

Returned to her seclusion horrified.

There she abode, so conscious of her worth,

Not even Pilate's Question called her forth,

Nor Galileo, kneeling to deny

The Laws that hold our Planet 'neath the sky.

Meantime, her kindlier sister, whom men all

Fiction, did all her work and more than all,

with so much zeal, devotion, tact, and care,

That no one noticed Truth was otherwhere.



Then came a War when, bombed and gassed and mined,

Truth rose once more, perforce, to meet mankind,

And through the dust and glare and wreck of things,

Beheld a phantom on unbalanced wings,

Reeling and groping, dazed, dishevelled, dumb,

But semaphoring direr deeds to come.



Truth hailed and bade her stand; the quavering shade

Clung to her knees and babbled, 'Sister, aid!

I am-I was-thy Deputy, and men

Besought me for my useful tongue or pen

To gloss their gentle deeds, and I complied,

And they, and thy demands, were satisfied.

But this-' she pointed o'er the blistered plain,

where men as Gods and devils wrought amain-

'This is beyond me! Take thy work again.'



Tablets and pen transferred, she fled afar,

And Truth assumed the record of the War ....

She saw, she heard, she read, she tried to tell

Facts beyond precedent and parallel-

Unfit to hint or breathe, much less to write,

But happening every minute, day and night.

She called for proof. It came. The dossiers grew.

She marked them, first, 'Return. This can't be true.'

Then, underneath the cold official word:

'This is not really half of what occurred.'



She faced herself at last, the story runs,

And telegraphed her sister: 'Come at once.

Facts out of hand. Unable overtake

Without your aid. Come back for Truth's own sake!

Co-equal rank and powers if you agree.

They need us both, but you far more than me!'



- Rudyard Kipling

Before a midnight breaks in storm,

or herded sea in wrath,

Ye know what wavering gusts inform

The greater tempest's path;

Till the loosed wind

Drive all from mind,

Except Distress, which, so will prophets cry,

O'ercame them, houseless, from the unhinting sky.



Ere rivers league against the land

In piratry of flood,

Ye know what waters steal and stand

Where seldom water stood.

Yet who will note,

Till fields afloat,

And washen carcass and the returning well,

Trumpet what these poor heralds strove to tell?



Ye know who use the Crystal Ball

(To peer by stealth on Doom),

The Shade that, shaping first of all,

Prepares an empty room.

Then doth it pass

Like breath from glass,

But, on the extorted vision bowed intent,

No man considers why it came or went.



Before the years reborn behold

Themselves with stranger eye,

And the sport-making Gods of old,

Like Samson slaying, die,

Many shall hear

The all-pregnant sphere,

Bow to the birth and sweat, but - speech denied-

Sit dumb or -dealt in part- fall weak and wide.



Yet instant to fore-shadowed need

The eternal balance swings;

That winged men, the Fates may breed

So soon as Fate hath wings.

These shall possess

Our littleness,

And in the imperial task (as worthy) lay

Up our lives' all to piece one giant day.



- Rudyard Kipling

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer.