And in a lonely room where no light was,
Save what the moon made at the casement there,
Sat pondering his hurt, and in the dark
Gave audience to a host of grievances.
For never comes reflection, gay or grave,
But it brings with it comrades of its hue.
So did he fall to thinking how his day
Declined, and how his narrow life had run
Obscurely through an age of great events
Such as men never saw, nor will again
Until the globe be riven by God's fire.
Others had ventured for the Golden Fleece,
Knaves of no parts at all, and got renown,
(By force of circumstance and not desert,)
While he up there on that rock-bastioned coast
Had rotted like some old hulk's skeleton,
Whose naked and bleached ribs the lazy tide
Laps day by day, and no man thinks of more.
Then was jade Fortune in her lavish mood.
Why had he not for distant Colchis sailed
And been the Jason of these Argonauts?
True, some had come to block on Tower Hill,
Or quittance made in a less noble sort;
Still they had lived, from life's high-mantling cup
Had blown the bead. In such case, if one's head
Be of its momentary laurel stripped
And made a show of stuck on Temple Bar
Or at the Southwark end of London Bridge,
What mattered it? At worst man dies but once--
So far as known. One may not master death,
But life should be one's lackey. He had been
Time's dupe and bondsman; ever since his birth
Had walked this planet with his eye oblique,
Grasped what was worthless, what were most dear missed;
Missed love and fame, and all the sum of things
Fame gets a man in England--the Queen's smile,
Which means, when she 's in humor, abbey-lands,
Appointments, stars and ribbons for the breast,
And that sleek adulation that takes shape
I' the down-drooping of obsequious lids
When one ascends a stair or walks the pave.
Good Lord! but it was excellent to see
How Expectation in the ante-room
Crooks back to Greatness passing to the Queen--
"Kind sir!" "Sweet sir!" "I prithee speed my suit!"
'T was somewhat to be flattered, though by fools,
For even a fool's coin hath a kind of ring.
Yet after all--thus did the grapes turn sour
To master Fox, in fable--who would care
To moil and toil to gain a little fame,
And have each rascal