Page:Poems that every child should know (ed. Burt, 1904).djvu/355

Rh Be there, for once and all,

Sever'd great minds from small,

Announced to each his station in the Past!

Was I, the world arraign'd,

Were they, my soul disdain'd,

Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!

Now, who shall arbitrate?

Ten men love what I hate,

Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;

Ten, who in ears and eyes

Match me: we all surmise,

They this thing, and I that: whom shall my soul believe?

Not on the vulgar mass

Call'd "work," must sentence pass,

Things done, that took the eye and had the price;

O'er which, from level stand,

The low world laid its hand,

Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

But all, the world's coarse thumb

And finger fail'd to plumb,

So pass'd in making up the main account;

All instincts immature,

All purposes unsure,

That weigh'd not as his work, yet swell'd the man's amount:

Thoughts hardly to be pack'd

Into a narrow act,

Fancies that broke through language and escaped;