You may gaze at us and live, and live assured of our confusion:
For the False Gods are mortal, and are made for you to kill.
"And you may as well observe, while apprehensively at ease
With an Art that's inorganic and is anything you please,
That anon your newest ruin may lie crumbling unregarded,
Like an old shrine forgotten in a forest of new trees.
"Howsoever like no other be the mode you may employ,
There's an order in the ages for the ages to enjoy;
Though the temples you are shaping and the passions you are singing
Are a long way from Athens and a longer way from Troy.
"When we promise more than ever of what never shall arrive,
And you seem a little more than ordinarily alive,
Make a note that you are sure you understand our obligations --
For there's grief always auditing where two and two are five.
"There was this for us to say and there was this for you to know,
Though it humbles and it hurts us when we have to tell you so.
If you doubt the only truth in all our perjured composition,
May the True Gods attend you and forget us when we go."
Archibald's Example
Old Archibald, in his eternal chair,
Where trespassers, whatever their degree,
Were soon frowned out again, was looking off
Across the clover when he said to me:
"My green hill yonder, where the sun goes down
Without a scratch, was once inhabited
By trees that injured him -- an evil trash
That made a cage, and held him while he bled.
"Gone fifty years, I see them as they were
Before they fell.
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