Thus much conceded, still the first fact stays-- You do despise me; your ideal of life 50 Is not the bishop's: you would not be I. You would like better to be Goethe, now, Or Buonaparte, or, bless me, lower still, Count D'Orsay--so you did what you preferred, Spoke as you thought, and, as you cannot help, Believed or disbelieved, no matter what, So long as on that point, whate'er it was, You loosed your mind, were whole and sole yourself. --That, my ideal never can include, Upon that element of truth and worth 60 Never be based! for say they make me Pope-- (They can't--suppose it for our argument!) Why, there I'm at my tether's end, I've reached My height, and not a height which pleases you: An unbelieving Pope won't do, you say. It's like those eerie stories nurses tell, Of how some actor on a stage played Death, With pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled dart, And called himself the monarch of the world; Then, going in the tire-room afterward, 70 Because the play was done, to shift himself, Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly, The moment he had shut the closet door, By Death himself. Thus God might touch a Pope At unawares, ask what his baubles mean, And whose part he presumed to play just now. Best be yourself, imperial, plain and true! So, drawing comfortable breath again, You weigh and find, whatever more or less I boast of my ideal realized 80 Is nothing in the balance when opposed To your ideal, your grand simple life, Of which you will not realize one jot. I am much, you are nothing; you would be all, I would be merely much: you beat me there. No, friend, you do not beat me: hearken why! The common problem, yours, mine, every one's, Is--not to fancy what were fair in life Provided it could be--but, finding first What may be, then find how to make it fair 90 Up to our means: a very different thing! No abstract intellectual plan of life Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws, But one, a man, who is man and nothing more, May lead within a world which (by your leave) Is Rome or London, not Fool's-paradise. Embellish Rome, idealize away, Make paradise of London if you can, You're welcome, nay, you're wise.