Sunday, August 21, 2011
Aliens and Outcasts
Walter Savage Landor, Poems, Dialogues in Verse and Epigrams, ed. Charles G. Crump, vol. II (London: J.M. Dent & Co., 1892), p. 127:
Eastman Johnson, Old Man Seated
Newer› ‹Older
Boastfully call we all the world our own:
What are we who would call it so? the form
Erect, the eye that pierces stars and suns,
Droop and decay; no beast so piteously.
More mutable than wind-worn leaves are we:
Yea, lower are we than the dust's estate;
The very dust is as it was before;
Dissever'd from ourselves, aliens and outcasts
From what our pride dared call inheritance,
We only live to feel our fall and die.
