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Rh And, if I would not rather pore upon An ounce of common, ugly, human dust, An artisan’s palm, or a peasant’s brow, Unsmooth, ignoble, save to me and God, Than track old Nilus to his silver roots, And wait on all the changes of the moon Among the mountain-peaks of Thessaly, (Until her magic crystal round itself For many a witch to see in)—set it down As weakness,—strength by no means. How is this That men of science, osteologists And surgeons, beat some poets, in respect For nature,—count nought common or unclean, Spend raptures upon perfect specimens Of indurated veins, distorted joints, Or beautiful new cases of curved spine: While we, we are shocked at nature’s falling off, We dare to shrink back from her warts and blains, We will not, when she sneezes, look at her, Not even to say ‘God bless her’? That’s our wrong; For that, she will not trust us often with Her larger sense of beauty and desire, But tethers us to a lily or a rose And bids us diet on the dew inside,— Left ignorant that the hungry beggar-boy (Who stares unseen against our absent eyes, And wonders at the gods that we must be, To pass so careless for the oranges!) Bears yet a breastful of a fellow-world To this world, undisparaged, undespoiled,