Canto LXII

Dost thou look back on what hath been,

      As some divinely gifted man,

      Whose life in low estate began

And on a simple village green;

Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,

      And grasps the skirts of happy chance,

      And breasts the blows of circumstance,

And grapples with his evil star;

Who makes by force his merit known

      And lives to clutch the golden keys,

      To mould a mighty state's decrees,

And shape the whisper of the throne;

And moving up from high to higher,

      Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope

      The pillar of a people's hope,

The centre of a world's desire;

Yet feels, as in a pensive dream,

      When all his active powers are still,

      A distant dearness in the hill,

A secret sweetness in the stream,

The limit of his narrower fate,

      While yet beside its vocal springs

      He played at counsellors and kings,

With one that was his earliest mate;

Who ploughs with pain his native lea

      And reaps the labour of his hands,

      Or in the furrow musing stands;

'Does my old friend remember me?'