I lament your
inability to do this, as heartily as any person living; yet Heaven
willed it; and it is in consequence to Heaven these aforementioned
cavillers should rightfully complain.
So to such impious people do you make no answer at all, unless indeed
you should elect to answer them by repetition of this song which I now
make for you, my little book, at your departure from me. And the song
runs in this fashion:
Depart, depart, my book! and live and die
Dependent on the idle fantasy
Of men who cannot view you, quite, as I.
For I am fond, and willingly mistake
My book to be the book I meant to make,
And cannot judge you, for that phantom's sake.
Yet pardon me if I have wrought too ill
In making you, that never spared the will
To shape you perfectly, and lacked the skill.
Ah, had I but the power, my book, then I
Had wrought in you some wizardry so high
That no man but had listened ...
They pass by,
And shrug--as we, who know that unto us
It has been granted never to fare thus,
And never to be strong and glorious.
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