There has fallen a splendid tear From the passion-flower at the gate. She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate; The red rose cries,'She is near, she is near;' And the white rose weeps,'She is late;' The larkspur listens,'I hear, I hear;' And the lily whispers,'I wait.' She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airya tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat; Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble under her feet, And blossom in purple and red.

-Tennyson
  Maud, pt.1, sect.22, stanzas10^11, l. 908^23.

   For man is man and master of his fate.

-Tennyson
  Idylls of the King,'The Marriage of Geraint', l.355.

Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli. Depending on the reception of the reader, books have their own fate.

-Terentianus Maurus   2/3c
De litteris syllabis et metris,1286.The phrase is often incorrectly attributed to Horace.

Will you be a reader, a student merely, or a seer? Read your fate, seewhat isbefore you, and walkon intofuturity.

-Thoreau, Henry David
  Walden, or Life in theWoods,'Sounds'.

The fate of poetry isto fall in love with the world, in spite of History.

-Walcott, Derek Alton
  In the NewYorkTimes, 8 Dec.

Verse thus design'd has no ill fate, If it arrive but at the date Of fading beauty, if it prove But as long-liv'd as present love.

-Waller, Edmund
  'Of EnglishVerse'.

The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves† The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army.Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance or abject submission.We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.

-Washington, BookerTaliaferro
  General orders, 2 Jul. Quoted inJ C Fitzpatrick (ed) Writings of GeorgeWashington (1932), vol.5.

In Baxter's view, the care of external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the'saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.' But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.

-Weber, Max
^5  The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (translated byTalcott Parsons,1930), ch.5. Richard Baxter (1615^91) was an eminent Puritan, chaplain of Cromwell's army.

I know that I shall meet my fate Somewhere among the clouds above; Those that I fight I do not hate, Those that I guard I do not love.

-Yeats,W(illiam) B(utler)
  'An Irish Airman Foresees his Death', l.1.^4. Collected inThe Wild Swans at Coole (1919).