Stiffen with age to stocks and stones;
And crabbed use the conscience sears
In sinners of an hundred years.
Charles Lamb (On an infant dying as soon as born).
Oh dreadful thought, if all our sires and we
Are but foundations of a race to be,—
Stones which one thrusts in earth, and builds thereon
A write delight, a Parian Parthenon,
And thither, long thereafter, youth and maid