And thus it is. The tale I have to tell <br />Is such another. He who reads shall find <br />That which he brings to it of Heaven or Hell <br />For his best recompense where much is blind, <br />A jest--book or a sermon or mere wind,-- <br />Each as he may,--for life's least godly mirth <br />Is mingled strangely here with fate unkind, <br />And this is a true story of the Earth. <br />The passionate heart of youth with its desires <br />Is not all noble, and some baseness clings <br />For ever mixed with its eternal fires, <br />Else were it single among human things. <br />And all life's wisdom learns but this last plan, <br />To jest at tears and weep Man's mirth and Man.<br /><br />Wilfrid Scawen Blunt<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/esther-a-sonnet-sequence-iv/
