WHY, life, must mock itself, to mark how small Are the distinctions of its various pride. 'Tis strange how we delight in the unreal: The fanciful and the fantastic make One half our triumphs. Not in mighty things -- The glorious offerings of our mind to fate Do we ask homage to our vanities, One half so much as from the false and vain: The petty trifles that the social world Has fancied into grandeur. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TO GALLANT FRANCE by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON BACCALAUREATE by ARCHIBALD MACLEISH WITH BEST WISHES by DOROTHY PARKER THE ARCHITECT AT THE EDGE OF THE SEA by KAREN SWENSON STANZAS IN MEMORY OF THE AUTHOR OF OBERMANN by MATTHEW ARNOLD THRENODY by RALPH WALDO EMERSON A ROUGH RHYME ON A ROUGH MATTER; THE ENGLISH GAME LAWS by CHARLES KINGSLEY |