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shall we praise the magnificence of the dead, The great man humbled, the haughty brought to dust? Is there a horn we should not blow as proudly For the meanest of us all, who creeps his days, Guarding his heart from blows, to die obscurely? I am no king, have laid no kingdoms waste, Taken no princes captive, led no triumphs Of weeping women through long walls of trumpets; Say rather, I am no one, or an atom; Say rather, two great gods, in a vault of starlight, Play ponderingly at chess, and at the game’s end One of the pieces, shaken, falls to the floor And runs to the darkest corner; and that piece Forgotten there, left motionless, is I. .. . Say that I have no name, no gifts, no power, Am only one of millions, mostly silent; One who came with eyes and hands and a heart, Looked on beauty, and loved it, and then left it. Say that the fates of time and space obscured me, Led me a thousand ways to pain, bemused me, Wrapped me in ugliness; and like great spiders Dispatched me at their leisure. . . . Well, what then? 184