Classic Poem

To think that men of former days
In naked truth deserved the praise
Which, fain to have in flesh and blood
An image of the imagined good,
Poets have sung and men received
And all too glad to be deceived
Most plastic and most inexact
Posterity has told for fact—
To say what was, was not as we,
This also is a vanity.

Ere Agamemnon, warriors were,
Ere Helen, beauties equalling her,
Heroes and graces 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 Solon, Cato, Socrates,
Or Mahomet or Confutzee,
This also a vanity.

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 Sinbad, Crusoe, or St Preux,
And say as he was, so was he,
This also is a vanity.

It is not here, it is not there,
Nor in the earth, nor in the air,
That better thing than can be seen
Is neither now nor e'er has been;
It is, not in this land or that,
But in a place we soon are at,
Where all can seek and some can find,
Where hope is liberal, fancy kind,
And what we wish for we can see—
Which also is a vanity.