I walk in stately mansions
The great are kind to me
They find perhaps within my verse
A tang of novelty
If beauty gilds my rhyming,
How quickly they applaud;
But when the iron clamps my line,
Their thoughts are all abroad.
Ah! Beauty—I adore it,
And hold it ardently;
Yet beauty is a bloom that dies—
The truth is more to me.
How oft the truth refuses
To bend in singing smooth;
For thoughts uprooted from the soul
Come rugged and uncouth.
