Classic Poem

They told Don Quixote he was old and dazed,
Ill-born, a pauper, not a knight at all,
A thing to make the very crows amazed
With the grotesqueness of his spectacle.
I think his words of answer spoke but part
Of his defence against the worldly crew;
I think great lights were flashing in his heart
Whereof he told not, and they never knew.
I think he saw all that they saw and more —
The gaunt and tattered knight, the sorry frame;
But cared not, knowing that his bosom bore
The living embers of a vanished flame,
And that his memory guarded now alone
The history of a beauty that was gone.