Classic Poem

I.

He was by vicious curs bayed and beset
When he passed by the gateway of this world
On his immortal quest. He stopped and hurled
Some gems that crippled half the pack, and yet
A few went hounding him until he met
The Angel in whose dark plumes he was furled.
Unutterable scorn that proud lip curled,
Unlanguaged grief those eyes of sorrow wet.
But infamy held off until he lay
Dead in his grave and shorn of all his might,
Then fiercely struck — not boldly! Even to-day
The hand that drives its little lance of spite
At that brow chapleted with fadeless bay
Belies its aim and trembles with affright.

II.

Thou gentleman, whose blue veins purely ran
Ancestral chastity and noble pride,
Thy fate was and is hard — to be belied
By lepers of an ignominious clan.
It matters not that thou didst lay the plan
Of a new era reaching far and wide
And builded for us on time's golden tide
More than the pleasure-domes of Kubla Khan —
It matters not that advocates for thee,
And worthy of thee, thy true greatness tell —
Thou art an outlaw, and Persephone,
When she beheld thy shade august and fell,
Shrank with her pallid court and frantically
Slammed, locked, and bolted every door of hell.