104
SONGS OF THE ROAD
The stolen fame of twenty smaller men?
You prate about my learning. I would urge
My want of learning rather as a proof
That I am still myself. Have I not traced
A seaboard to Bohemia, and made
The cannons roar a whole wide century
Before the first was forged? Think you, then,
That he, the ever-learned Verulam,
Would have erred thus? So may my very faults
In their gross falseness prove that I am true,
And by that falseness gender truth in you.
And what is left? They say that they have found
A script, wherein the writer tells my Lord
He is a secret poet. True enough!
But surely now that secret is o'er past.
