 | The Poems of John Clare |  |
FLATTERY
Go, flattery, go, thou nothing clothed in sound,The voice of ages lives not on thy tongue;
Time treads thee like a shadow on the ground
As nothing were, and laugheth at the wrong.
Thou ten days' wonder of an idle noise,
Cease teasing truth with subtleties and lies;
Truth, that thy every spider-web destroys,
With higher aim bids upward thoughts arise,
Where past the storm of strife, the sickly praise,
The barefaced lie, in secret hatched and bred,
Is left unto the storm of after days,
And thy gay-fluttering streets untenanted
Of friendships, age-swept, silent and alone,
Buried and chilled like cities into stone.
| The Poems of John Clare | |