SONGS OF THE ROAD
103
And though perchance by Isis or by Cam
The meditative, philosophic plant
May best luxuriate; yet some would say
That in the task of limning mortal life
A fitter preparation might be made
Beside the banks of Thames. And then again,
If I be suspect, in that I was not
A fellow of a college, how, I pray,
Will Jonson pass, or Marlowe, or the rest,
Whose measured verse treads with as proud a gait
As that which was my own? Whence did they suck
This honey that they stored? Can you recite
The vantages which each of these has had
And I had not? Or is the argument
That my Lord Verulam hath written all,
And covers in his wide-embracing self
