Chivalry

 

Also, my little book, you will encounter more malignant people who will jeer at you, and say that you and I have cheated them of your purchase-money. To these you will reply, with Plutarch, Non mi aurum posco, nec mi pretium. Secondly you will say that, of necessity, the tailor cuts the coat according to his cloth; and that he cannot undertake to robe an Ephialtes or a towering Orion suitably when the resources of his shop amount at most to three scant yards of cambric. Indeed had I the power to make you better, my little book, I would have done it. A good conscience is a continual feast, and I summon all heaven to be my witness that had I been Homer you had awed the world, another Iliad. I lament the improbability of your doing this as heartily as any person living; yet Heaven willed it; and it is in consequence to Heaven these same cavillers should now complain if they insist upon considering themselves to be aggrieved.

So to such impious people do you make no answer at all, unless indeed you should elect to answer them by repetition of this trivial song which I now make for you, my little book, at your departure from me. And the song runs in this fashion:

Depart, depart, my book! and live and die 
Dependent on the idle fantasy 
Of men who cannot view you, quite, as I. 

For I am fond, and willingly mistake 
My book to be the book I meant to make, 
And cannot judge you, for that phantom's sake. 

Yet pardon me if I have wrought too ill 
In making you, that never spared the will 
To shape you perfectly, and lacked the skill. 

Ah, had I but the power, my book, then I 
Had wrought in you some wizardry so high 
That no man but had listened...!
They pass by,

And shrug—as we, who know that unto us 
It has been granted never to fare thus, 
And never to be strong and glorious. 

Is it denied me to perpetuate 
What so much loving labor did create?— 
I hear Oblivion tap upon the gate, 
And acquiesce, not all disconsolate.

For I have got such recompense 
Of that high-hearted excellence 

Which the contented craftsman knows,
Alone, that to loved labor goes, 
And daily doth the work he chose, 
And counts all else impertinence!

EXPLICIT DECAS REGINARUM