Page:Songs of the Road Doyle.djvu/114

Rh What can they urge to dispossess the crown

Which all my comrades and the whole loud world

Did in my lifetime lay upon my brow?

Look straitly at these arguments and see

How witless and how fondly slight they be.

Imprimis, they have urged that, being born

In the mean compass of a paltry town,

I could not in my youth have trimmed my mind

To such an eagle pitch, but must be found,

Like the hedge sparrow, somewhere near the ground.

Bethink you, sirs, that though I was denied

The learning which in colleges is found,

Yet may a hungry brain still find its food

Wherever books may lie or men may be;