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Rh Anent the vanities. No doubt I should, If mine were the one life that I have lived; But with a few good glimpses I have had Of heaven through the little holes in hell, I do not any longer feel myself To be ordained or even qualified For criticising God to my advantage. If you doubt the true humility of this, You doubt the spectrum; and if you doubt that, You cannot understand what price it was The poet paid, at one time and another, For those indemnifying sonnet-songs That are to be the kernel in what lives To shrine him when the new-born men come singing.

"Nor can you understand what I have read From even the squeezed items of account Which I have to my credit in that book Whereof the leaves are ages and the text Eternity. What do I care to-day For the pages that have nothing? I have lived, And I have died, and I have lived again; And I am very comfortable. Yes, Though I look back through barren years enough To make me seem—as I transmute myself In a downward retrospect from what I am—