Page:The Colonnades a Poem.pdf/16

Welcome as Christ into his father's house,
To hands divine soothing the sobbing locks
Which the dews drenched upon Judean hills,
Should bard be to the world. He too redeems.
And those strong powers that spin the heavens around
Shall sometimes break him for the bread of life.
He makes by breaking; he advances backward—
Climbs downward into failures for success.
Man's justice pays him not. Of acrobats
Ye ask not manners,—let your lawyers pass
For cunning, three days' pleaders for their wind,—
See in the galleries many painted heads
Whose greatness was the favor of their times—
Great for it filled great place, or thought it did,
And be content; they had some lucky knack,
Praiseworthy till too many such shall be—
Bricks of the state house building. But the bard,
This world's translator, and of other worlds
Projector in the heavens behind the eye,
These cannot measure; for these cannot see