youth, exhausted, worn,—and great;
Pale Book-men,—charming only in their style;
And Poets, jaundiced with eternal bile;—
All the poor Titans our Cocytus claims,
With tortured livers, and immortal names:—
Such made the guests, Amphitryons well may boast,
But still the student travail'd in the host;—
These were the living books he loved to read,
Keys to his lore, and comments on his creed.
From them he rose with more confirm'd disdain
Of the thorn-chaplet and the gilded chain.
Oft, from such stately revels, to the shed
Where Hunger couch'd, the same dark impulse led;
Intent, the Babel, Art has built, to trace,
Here scan the height, and there explore the base;
That structure call'd "The Civilized," as vain
As its old symbol on the Shinar plain,
Where Pride collects the bricks and slime, and then
But builds the city to divide the men;
Swift comes the antique curse,—smites one from one,
Rends the great bond, and leaves the pile undone.