900
And stretch of tether twenty years to come. 
We both have minds and bodies much alike: 
In truth’s name, don’t you want my bishopric,
My daily bread, my influence and my state? 
You’re young.  I’m old; you must be old one day;
Will you find then, as I do hour by hour,
Women their lovers kneel to, who cut curls
From your fat lap-dog’s ear to grace a brooch—­
Dukes, who petition just to kiss your ring—­
With much beside you know or may conceive? 910
Suppose we die to-night:  well, here am I,
Such were my gains, life bore this fruit to me,
While writing all the same my articles
On music, poetry, the fictile vase
Found at Albano, chess, Anacreon’s Greek. 
But you—­the highest honor in your life,
The thing you’ll crown yourself with, all your days,
Is—­dining here and drinking this last glass
I pour you out in sign of amity
Before we part forever.  Of your power 920
And social influence, worldly worth in short,
Judge what’s my estimation by the fact,
I do not condescend to enjoin, beseech,
Hint secrecy on one of all these words! 
You’re shrewd and know that should you publish one
The world would brand the lie—­my enemies first,
Who’d sneer—­“the bishop’s an arch-hypocrite
And knave perhaps, but not so frank a fool.” 
Whereas I should not dare for both my ears
Breathe one such syllable, smile one such smile, 930
Before the chaplain who reflects myself—­
My shade’s so much more potent than your flesh. 
What’s your reward, self-abnegating friend? 
Stood you confessed of those exceptional
And privileged great natures that dwarf mine—­
A zealot with a mad ideal in reach,
A poet just about to print his ode,
A statesman with a scheme to stop this war,
An artist whose religion is his art—­
I should have nothing to object:  such men 940
Carry the fire, all things grow warm to them,
Their drugget’s worth my purple, they beat me. 
But you—­you ’re just as little those as I—­
You, Gigadibs, who, thirty years of age,
Write statedly for Blackwood’s Magazine,
Believe you see two points in Hamlet’s soul
Unseized by the Germans yet—­which view you’ll print—­
Meantime the best you have to show being still
That lively lightsome article we took
Almost for the true Dickens—­what’s its name? 950
“The Slum and Cellar, or Whitechapel life
Limned after dark!” it made me laugh, I know,
And pleased a month, and brought you in ten pounds. 
—­Success I recognize and compliment,
And therefore give you, if you choose, three words
(The card and pencil-scratch is quite enough)
Which whether here, in Dublin or New York,
Will get you, prompt as at my eyebrow’s wink,
Such terms as never you aspired to get
In all our own reviews and some not ours. 960