Page:The Poems and Prose remains of Arthur Hugh Clough, volume 2 (1869).djvu/487

Most plastic and most inexact,
Posterity has told for fact;—
To say what was, was not as we,
This also is a vanity.

ii
Ere Agamemnon, warriors were,
Ere Helen, beauties equalling her,
Brave ones and fair, whom no one knows,
And brave or fair as these or those.
The commonplace whom daily we
In our dull streets and houses see,
To think of other mould than these
Were Cato, Solon, Socrates,
Or Mahomet or Confutze,
This also is a vanity.

iii
Hannibal, Cæsar, Charlemain,
And he before, who back on Spain
Repelled the fierce inundant Moor;
Godfrey, St. Louis, wise and pure,
Washington, Cromwell, John, and Paul,
Columbus, Luther, one and all,
Go mix them up, the false and true,
With Sindbad, Crusoe, or St. Preux,
And say as he was, so was he,
This also is a vanity.

iv
Say not: Behold it here or there,
Or on the earth, or in the air.
That better thing than can be seen
Is neither now nor e'er has been;