So Long as Men Can Breathe

The man of hundred-masks is thought to be
A hundred men, so large his soul, too large
It seems for such a simple body to
Contain: a hundred souls in just one man.

A bygone poet come again, a king,
A peerage made of learned men, a queen,
A peer, by king or queen a bastard born--
A kingly soul must have a lordly name.

The hoity-toity cannot brook to vaunt
A swain, a simple country boy, and grant
The epithet "the bard", that highest rank,
So gladly, to a lowborn glover's son.

Yet we all live by bread and get the pall:
Great men are greatly born, where'er begot;
He was himself and in himself contained
A hundred men: for all of time. Amen.