<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap"><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">We get the Dialectic fairly well,</div><font>How streams descending turn to trees that climb,<br>That what we are not we shall be in time,<br>Why some unlikes attract, all likes repel.<br>But is it up to creatures or their fate<br>To give the signal when to change a state?</font></div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap"><br></div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">Granted that we might possibly be great</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">And even be expected to get well</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">How can we know it is required by fate</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">As truths are forced on poets by a rhyme?</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">Ought we to rush upon our lives pell-mell?</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">Things have to happen at the proper time</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap"><br></div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">And no two lives are keeping the same time,</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">As we grow old our years accelerate</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">The pace of processes inside each cell</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">Alters profoundly when we feel unwell,</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">The motions of our protoplasmic slime</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">Can modify our whole idea of fate.</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap"><br></div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">Nothing is unconditional but fate.</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">To grumble at it is a waste of time,</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">To fight it, the unpardonable crime.</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">Our hopes and fears must not grow out of date,</div><div class="ydp5c890b15yahoo-style-wrap">No region can include itself as well,<div>To judge our sentence is to live in hell.</div><div><br></div><div>Suppose it should turn out, though, that our bell</div><div>Has been in fact already rung by fate?</div><div>A calm demeanor is all very well</div><div>Provided we were listening at the time.</div><div>We have a shrewd suspicion we are late,</div><div>Our look of rapt attention just a mime,</div><div><br></div><div>That we have really come to like our grime,</div><div>And do not care, so far as one can tell,</div><div>For whom or for how long we are to wait.</div><div>Whatever we obey becomes our fate,</div><div>What snares the pretty little birds is time,</div><div>That what we are, we only are too well.</div><div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- W.H. Auden</div> <br></div></div></body></html>