Page:Songs, Legends, and Ballads.djvu/47

Rh Or, past all suns, to find the awful centre
 * Round which they meanly wind a servile road;

Ah, will it raise us or degrade, to enter
 * Where that world's Shakespeare towers almost to God?

No, no; far better, "lords of all creation"
 * To strut our ant-hill, and to take our ease;

To look aloft and say, "That constellation
 * Was lighted there our regal sight to please!"

We owe no thanks to so-called men of science,
 * Who demonstrate that earth, not sun, goes round;

'Twere better think the sun a mere appliance
 * To light man's villages and heat his ground.

There seems no good in asking or in humbling;
 * The mind incurious has the most of rest;

If we can live and laugh and pray, not grumbling,
 * 'Tis all we can do here—and 'tis the best.