I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untraveled world whose margin fades
Forever and forever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life! Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains; but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
-Tennyson ('Ulysses')
Yesterday was this winter's first snowfall (aside from the unexpected accumulation in October, which I would classify as autumnal snow). Snow is one of the (many) things that brings out my childish giddiness, this time only slightly dampened by the thought of having to drive the icy roads. Fortunately rain has washed away the remnants, leaving only a gloomy sky and a lingering nip in the air.