88
To A. H. C.
(In recollection of certain debates on the futility of Metaphysics.)
You taunt me as a shallow man:
You mock my prosy middle age:
Would demonstrate me, if you can,
Devoid of youth's exalted rage
Bound on a dusty pilgrimage.
You mock my prosy middle age:
Would demonstrate me, if you can,
Devoid of youth's exalted rage
Bound on a dusty pilgrimage.
Because I do not much peruse
The words that Schopenhauer penned;
Locke's, Kant's and Hegel's lofty views
I don't aspire to comprehend;
Because, in short, my worthy friend,
The words that Schopenhauer penned;
Locke's, Kant's and Hegel's lofty views
I don't aspire to comprehend;
Because, in short, my worthy friend,
I'm, like yourself, a man of prose:
A man of commonplace belief,
Who doubts, and disbelieves, and knows,
And aims at joy, and flies from grief,
And has a taste for beer and beef.
A man of commonplace belief,
Who doubts, and disbelieves, and knows,
And aims at joy, and flies from grief,
And has a taste for beer and beef.
You do us wrong: for you and I
Are just as good as other men:
A hand to write, a seeing eye,
An ear which catches, now and then,
The sounds that haunt a poet's pen:
Are just as good as other men:
A hand to write, a seeing eye,
An ear which catches, now and then,
The sounds that haunt a poet's pen:
