But let us leave the fable now.
My Poet heard it with an aching brow."
And he made answer thus: "I thank thee, youth;
Strange is thy story to these aged ears,
But I bethink me thou hast told a truth
Under the guise of fable. If my tears,
Thou lost beloved star, lost now, forsooth,
Indeed could bring thee back among thy peers,
So new thou should'st be deemed as newly seen,
For men forget that thou hast ever been.
"There was a morning when I longed for fame,
There was a noontide when I passed it by,
There is an evening when I think not shame
Its substance and its being to deny;
For if men bear in mind great deeds, the name
Of him that wrought them shall they leave to die;
Or if his name they shall have deathless writ,
They change the deeds that first ennobled it.
"O golden letters of this monument!
O words to celebrate a loved renown
Lost now or wrested! and to fancies lent,
Or on a fabled forehead set for crown,
For my departed star, I am content,
Though legends dim and years her memory drown:
For nought were fame to her, compared and set
By this great truth which ye make lustrous yet."
"Adieu!" the Poet said, "my vanished star,
Thy duty and thy happiness were one.
Work is heaven's best; its fame is sublunar:
The fame thou dost not need--the work is done.
For thee I am content that these things are;
More than content were I, my race being run,
Might it be true of me, though none thereon
Should muse regretful--'While he lived he shone.
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