There is a race of men, who master life, <br />Their victory being inversely as their strife; <br />Who capture by refraining from pursuit; <br />Shake not the bough, yet load their hands with fruit; <br />The earth's high places who attain to fill, <br />By most indomitably sitting still. <br />While others, full upon the fortress hurled, <br />Lay fiery siege to the embattled world, <br />Of such rude arts _their_ natures feel no need; <br />Greatly inert, they lazily succeed; <br />Find in the golden mean their proper bliss, <br />And doing nothing, never do amiss; <br />But lapt in men's good graces live, and die <br />By all regretted, nobody knows why. <br /> <br />Cast in this fortunate Olympian mould, <br />The admirable * * * * behold; <br />Whom naught could dazzle or mislead, unless <br />'Twere the wild light of fatal cautiousness; <br />Who never takes a step from his own door <br />But he looks backward ere he looks before. <br />When once he starts, it were too much to say <br />He visibly gets farther on his way: <br />But all allow, he ponders well his course-- <br />For future uses hoarding present force. <br />The flippant deem him slow and saturnine, <br />The summed-up phlegm of that illustrious line; <br />But we, his honest adversaries, who <br />More highly prize him than his false friends do, <br />Frankly admire that simple mass and weight-- <br />A solid Roman pillar of the State, <br />So inharmonious with the baser style <br />Of neighbouring columns grafted on the pile, <br />So proud and imperturbable and chill, <br />Chosen and matched so excellently ill, <br />He seems a monument of pensive grace, <br />Ah, how pathetically out of place! <br /> <br />Would that some call he could not choose but heed-- <br />Of private passion or of public need-- <br />At last might sting to life that slothful power, <br />And snare him into greatness for an hour!<br /><br />William Watson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/sketch-of-a-political-character/
