Here is the man who made his way out of poverty and loneliness toward wealth and position, yet maintained his integrity through all the fight, and stood in life's evening time possessed of wealth, but in a moment saw it crash into nothing and fell under bondage to poverty.

And, here is some Henry Grady, a prince among men, the leader of the new South, his thoughts like roots drinking in the riches of the North; his speech like branches dropping bounty over all the tropic states, seeming to be the one indispensable man of his section, but who in the midst of his career is smitten and, dying, left his pilgrim band in bondage.
Here is Sir William Napier writing, "I am now old and feeble and miserable; my eyes are dim, very dim, with weeping for my lost child," and went on bound midst the thick shadows.

Or here are the man and woman, set each to each like perfect music unto noble words, and one is taken--but Robert Browning was left to dwell in such sorrow that for a time he could not see his pen for the thick darkness.

Here is the youth who by one sin fell out of man's regard, and struggling upward, found it was a far cry back to the lost heights, and wrote the story of his broken life in the song of "the bird with the broken pinion, that never flew as high again." Sooner or later each life passes under bondage.

For all strength will vanish as the morning dew our joys take wings and flit away; the eye dim, the ear dull, the thought decay, our dearest die.