Judge others by your common code
And measure them by your tailoring tape
Those puny beings in their petty pace
Doing their dull rounds within their allotted spheres
Their small breasts heaving in small hopes
All their tomorrows bringing them disappointments new
The flickering flames of their brief candles
Are then in darkness suddenly lost.
Witches whisper in every ear
But their timid hearts neither harken nor stir
By anything ambitious and vast.
Flightless from fright they explore no dizzy heights
Small fries they swim along the shallow coasts
Never venturing out into the open seas.
Their hearts sink even from a thought
Of leaping over a low stile.
Crawling creatures they pick up only crumbs
Worming their way to a dusty death.
Fortune’s beggars they never know
She is a hero’s whore.
Never a faceless follower
Nor a nameless nobody
Seeking safety in a crowd
Head and shoulder above the rabble
I march at the head of the host
Till I win that which someone else has lost.
Be he my boss or brother who blocks my goal
I shall baulk at nothing.
But look at my lady and her likes
All those feeble hearts,
Swept off their feet by a few drops of blood
Unable to outgrow a foolish philosophy
Or kill a conscience full of milk
Meant for the feeble, fail
On the threshold of that shadowy world
Where a different scale is used
To weigh what is good what is bad.
Only one death each of us owe to God
Which you pay every minute
But I pay once.
