OF OLD AND NEW TABLES 2Q5
buy like shopkeepers with shopkeepers' gold. For all that hath its fixed price is of little value.
Not whence ye come be your honour in future, but whither ye go ! Your will, and your foot that longeth to get beyond yourselves, be that your new honour !
Verily, not that ye have served a prince of what concern are princes now ? or that ye have become a bulwark unto that which standeth, in order that it might stand firmer !
Not that your kin hath become courtly at courts, and that ye have learnt to stand long hours in shal- low ponds, many-coloured, flamingo-like
(For to be able to stand is a merit with courtiers ; and all courtiers believe that to be allowed to sit is part of the bliss after death !)
Nor that a spirit, called holy, led your forefathers into lands of promise, which / do not praise. (For where there grew the evilest of all trees, the cross, in that land there is nothing worthy of praise!)
And, verily, wherever this 'holy ghost' led his knights, always in such expeditions goats and geese and cross-heads and wrong-heads led the train !
O my brethren, not backward shall your nobility gaze, but forward! Expelled ye shall be from all fathers' and forefathers' lands !
Your children s land ye shall love, (be this love your new nobility !) the land undiscovered, in the remotest sea ! For it I bid your sails seek and seek !
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