James Vila Blake, Sonnets from Marcus Aurelius 5

5. 

. . . Therefore provide for yourself to have continually this manner of quiet refuge, and renew yourself in your self, and have about you always some few brief and underlying or elemental principles, which straightway when you recur to them will be able to wash away all discontents, and send you back ready and willing to the affairs you must return to.

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.3 

5. 

I make my constant prayer unto all men, 

And unto Him who bringeth all to pass, 

And pray my fellows to afford me ken, 

And pray Him heartily the heavy mass 

Of my sole mind to lighten with design, 

And pray and pray them all that my soul move 

By some brief constancies whose antique line 

None ever scoff or doubt or disapprove. 

For as one mountain mightily upbears 

Ten thousand things upon its skyward slope, 

So by one truth, or few, my spirit fares 

To empire and immeasurable scope. 

Then go I to my business well content, 

Doing what I and Nature too have meant.