rummer-glass but shakes
While I ask--aloud, I do believe, God help me!--"Was it thus?
Can it be that so I faltered, stopped when just one step for us--"
(Us,--you were not born, I grant, but surely some day born would be)
"--One bold step had gained a province" (figurative talk, you see)
"Got no end of wealth and honor,--yet I stood stock still no less?"
--"For I was not Clive," you comment: but it needs no Clive to guess
Wealth were handy, honor ticklish, did no writing on the wall
Warn me "Trespasser, 'ware man-traps!" Him who braves that
notice--call
Hero! none of such heroics suit myself who read plain words,
Doff my hat, and leap no barrier. Scripture says the land's the
Lord's:
Louts them--what avail the thousand, noisy in a smock-frocked ring,
All-agog to have me trespass, clear the fence, be Clive their king?
Higher warrant must you show me ere I set one foot before
T'other in that dark direction, though I stand for evermore
Poor as Job and meek as Moses. Evermore? No! By-and-by
Job grows rich and Moses valiant, Clive turns out less wise than I.
Don't object "Why call him friend, then?" Power is power, my boy,
and still
Marks a man,--God's gift magnific, exercised for good or ill.
You've your boot now on my hearth-rug, tread what was a tiger's skin:
Rarely such a royal monster as I lodged the bullet in!
True, he murdered half a village, so his own death came to pass;
Still, for size and beauty, cunning, courage--ah, the brute he was!
Why, that Clive,--that youth, that greenhorn, that quill-driving
clerk, in fine,--
He sustained a siege in Arcot.... But the world knows! Pass the wine.

Where did I break off at? How bring Clive in? Oh, you mentioned
"fear"!
Just so: and, said I, that minds me of a story you shall hear.

We were friends then, Clive and I: so, when the clouds, about the orb
Late supreme, encroaching slowly, surely, threatened to absorb
Ray by ray its noontide brilliance,--friendship might, with
steadier eye
Drawing near, bear what had burned else, now no blaze--all majesty.
Too much bee's-wing floats my figure? Well, suppose a castle's new:
None presume to climb its ramparts, none find foothold sure for shoe
'Twixt those squares and squares of granite plating the impervious
pile
As his scale