 | Three Hundred Sonnets |  |
242
PROPHETS.
Prophets at home,—I smile to note your wrongs;How scantly praised at each ancestral hearth
Are ye, caress'd by million hearts and tongues,
And full of honours over half the earth:
O petty jealousies and paltry strife!
The little minds that chronicle a birth
Stood once for teachers in the task of life;
But, as the child of genius grew apace,
Dismay'd at his gigantic lineaments,
They fear'd to find his glory their disgrace,
His mind their master: so their worldly aim
Was still to vex him with discouragements,
To check the spring-tide budding of his fame,
And keep it down, to save themselves a name.
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