The scribe is a fool to think that he,
By scribbling alone in his sacrary,
By scraping his reams with a blunted quill—
The sum of his efforts amounting to nil—
Could hope to be heard or ever seen
Beyond this scrim, this cloister-screen.
He's locked in a sunlit tomb for life,
So free of fear, resentment, and strife;
Independent, yes, but uncoupled, untied,
And fraying like fringe disunified
From its parent weave; and furthermore:
There's a lock on his absent prison door.
Only social beasts can gnaw
Through their hempen bonds, and lay a paw
On the bars of their zoo—a pale existence
Within a cage's narrow distance;
But that's more liberty, I swear, I swear,
Than to cringe out of sight in a hermit-lair.
For a human such as the fool you see—
A perfect monk trapped in a fallacy—
He cannot budge from his leaden throne
To cavort in a far-off laurel-zone,
Forever in bloom with a heady odor
That makes him abandon his role of foreboder,
To never return to that sorry, sad cell
Where the cheeriest sound is the vesper-bell.
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