Breadth and Depth

GENTRY there be who don't figure in History;
Yet they are clever, too — deucedly I —
All that is puzzling, all tissues of mystery,

They will unravel you lucidly.
Hear their oracular dicta but thrown out,
You'd fancy those Wise Men of Gotham must find the
Philosophers' Stone out!

Yet they quit Earth without signal and voicelessly;

All their existence was vanity.
He seldom speaks — he deports himself noiselessly

Who would enlighten Humanity:

Lone, unbeheld, he by slow but incessant
Exertion extracts for the Future the pith of the Past and
the Present.

Look at yori tree, spreading like a pavilion! See

How it shines, shadows, and flourishes!
Not in its leaves, though all odour and brilliancy,

Seek we the sweet fruit that nourishes.
No! a dark prison incloses the kernel
Whence shoots with round bole and broad boughs the
green giant whose youth looks eternal!