The Lesson

When Charles the Heartless (not the headless) reigned, 
And many a wit his gift of verse profaned, 
Making of song the minister of crime, 
And veiling beauty with corruption's slime; 
All, who from king or court would favor win, 
Plunged in the whirl of fashionable sin; 
For License ruled with undisputed sway, 
And Truth and Righteousness became a prey.

Yet one, aloof from all the Court's wild glare, 
The shadow resting on his thin white hair, 
Blind, old, and poor, the butt of ridicule 
For pampered witlings, deemed half mad, half fool, 
As ruffled rake and wanton flaunted by, 
Lived, with his own grand thoughts for company, 
Asking no favor from the Vicious Great, 
Scorning alike their friendship and their hate. 
A proud, brave, true, and downright-honest man, 
A friend of Cromwell, and a Puritan. 
Blind, old, and poor! But lo ! those sightless eyes
Kindled with gleams from Upper Paradise, 
And on his ear fell fragments of the hymn 
Sung by archangels and by seraphim, 
What time they bent above their golden lyres, 
With radiant fingers flashing through the wires, 
And star-crowned hosts responded in accord,
“O. HOLY, HOLY, HOLY IS THE LORD!"

With patient toil, translating Heaven's sublime 
To the dull languages of Earth and Time, 
He still pursued his theme, and, day by day 
Built the strong verse no years shall sweep away: 
Nor, anxious, asked the verdict of the schools, 
Nor feared the frowns of parasites and fools; 
Content to wait till Fame, remorseful grown, 
For past injustice richly should atone, 
And, stern avenger of an age's wrong, 
Crown him the peerless of the Sons of song!

The king's buffoons have laughed themselves away; 
The gay court-wits and versers — where are they? 
Who now remembers their salacious rhymes, 
Their amorous songs, indecent as their times, 
Play, ode, anacreontic, bagatelle — 
All sparkling with the phosphorus of Hell? 
Haply, some fragments, found in dusty nooks, 
Where Bibliomania hides his cobwebbed books, 
Arrest, at times, the antiquarian's eye,
And win a laugh, soon stifled by a sigh; 
Then back once more to dust and darkness fall, 
To feed the mice or moths; and this is all! 
The rest forgot (alike the gold and dross), 
And the world richer, doubtless, for the loss!

But the blind Poet, who, 'mid scoffs and jeers,
Toiled on, appealing to the Unborn Years,
And turned, in childlike faith, his sightless eyes
To catch the gleam of far Eternities,
And heard, like murmurs of some mighty sea,
The plausive voice of peoples yet to be,
Swelling adown the corridors of Time
With crescent power and meanings more sublime,
Still lives! for centuries brighten his renown,
And add new lustre to his aureate crown ;
Nor can Oblivion, from the ward of Fame,
Steal the least ray that gilds our MILTON’S name!