Not vainly doth the earnest voice of man <br />Call for the thing that is his pure desire! <br />Fame is the birthright of the living lyre! <br />To noble impulse Nature puts no ban. <br />Nor vainly to the Sphinx thy voice was raised! <br />Tho' all thy great emotions like a sea, <br />Against her stony immortality, <br />Shatter themselves unheeded and amazed. <br />Time moves behind her in a blind eclipse: <br />Yet if in her cold eyes the end of all <br />Be visible, as on her large closed lips <br />Hangs dumb the awful riddle of the earth; - <br />She sees, and she might speak, since that wild call, <br />The mighty warning of a Poet's birth.<br /><br />George Meredith<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-alex-smith-the-glasgow-poet-on-his-sonnet-to-fame/
