| ‘WHAT have I earned for all that work,’ I said, | |
| ‘For all that I have done at my own charge? | |
| The daily spite of this unmannerly town, | |
| Where who has served the most is most defamed, | |
| The reputation of his lifetime lost | 5 |
| Between the night and morning. I might have lived, | |
| And you know well how great the longing has been, | |
| Where every day my footfall should have lit | |
| In the green shadow of Ferrara wall; | |
| Or climbed among the images of the past— | 10 |
| The unperturbed and courtly images— | |
| Evening and morning, the steep street of Urbino | |
| To where the duchess and her people talked | |
| The stately midnight through until they stood | |
| In their great window looking at the dawn; | 15 |
| I might have had no friend that could not mix | |
| Courtesy and passion into one like those | |
| That saw the wicks grow yellow in the dawn; | |
| I might have used the one substantial right | |
| My trade allows: chosen my company, | 20 |
| And chosen what scenery had pleased me best.’ | |
| Thereon my phoenix answered in reproof, | |
| ‘The drunkards, pilferers of public funds, | |
| All the dishonest crowd I had driven away, | |
| When my luck changed and they dared meet my face, | 25 |
| Crawled from obscurity, and set upon me | |
| Those I had served and some that I had fed; | |
| Yet never have I, now nor any time, | |
Complained of the people.’
All I could reply | |
| Was: ‘You, that have not lived in thought but deed, | 30 |
| Can have the purity of a natural force, | |
| But I, whose virtues are the definitions | |
| Of the analytic mind, can neither close | |
| The eye of the mind nor keep my tongue from speech.’ | |
| And yet, because my heart leaped at her words, | 35 |
| I was abashed, and now they come to mind | |
| After nine years, I sink my head abashed. | |
