HOW grand he would have stood, had he declined
The needless coronet he donned, as though
Its gilt could heighten his proud aureole's glow.
But downward he has stepped, a seat to find —
Not with the lords of that imperial kind
Whose simple manhood, fed by love and truth,
Found far from monarchs' courts perennial youth
In the ideal gardens of the mind; —
But in a throng of blank nobilities
In outward fellowship of lip and eye —
Of empty forms and hollow courtesies;
Thou art become as one of us — they cry.
Another shape than thine must now be worn.
Son of the morning — how thy beams are shorn!
More verses by Christopher Pearse Cranch
- Sonnet Xlviii. Gladstone.
- Sonnet Xv: The Photograph
- Sonnet Xvi. The Spectroscope.
- Sonnet Xvii. The Microscope.
- Sonnet Xviii. The Fireside.
