What! and shall _we_, with such submissive airs <br />As age demands in reverence from the young, <br />Await these crumbs of praise from Europe flung, <br />And doubt of our own greatness till it bears <br />The signet of your Goethes or Voltaires? <br />We who alone in latter times have sung <br />With scarce less power than Arno's exiled tongue-- <br />We who are Milton's kindred, Shakespeare's heirs. <br />The prize of lyric victory who shall gain <br />If ours be not the laurel, ours the palm? <br />More than the froth and flotsam of the Seine, <br />More than your Hugo-flare against the night, <br />And more than Weimar's proud elaborate calm, <br />One flash of Byron's lightning, Wordsworth's light.<br /><br />William Watson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-exaggerated-deference-to-foreign-literary-opinion/
