Frank Harris - My life and loves Vol. 4

And we children of an hour quarrel and dispute and show greed and envy while the days shorten to the inevitable end. How could Whitman praise death!

But after all, what does death matter? It is hideous and terrible, if you will; but few can tell when the curtain will fall and the play for them be finished.

And meanwhile one's work remains. A, B, and C look at it and shrug indifferent shoulders and the years pass and one seems forgotten. Suddenly, some one comes who is interested. "Strange," he says, "how did this work escape praise?" And he begins to praise it, and others follow him, wondering where this new teacher should be placed.

Sometimes, as in the case of Shakespeare, the recognition has to wait three hundred years. What matter? It was a century before anyone dreamed of placing Heine with Goethe: what do the years matter? Sooner or later we are judged by our peers and the judgment is unchangeable. I wait for my peers, welcoming them.

"He has written naughty passages," says one, and my friend replies, "so did Shakespeare in 'Hamlet' and with less provocation." "His life is the fullest ever lived," says my disciple, and they all realize that a supreme word has been spoken and that such a man is among the great forever.