THE LARK AT HEAVEN'S GATE

Spokesman and servant of my enemies,

And have absorbed from them, like the aptest of pupils,

Their finest and most accomplished vices. Often

These hours past, as I spun my snare of words

They seemed familiar, touched a memory.

Of course, some liars I met along the way

Uttered them first, and I became their ape.

The metamorphoses a man assumes

Will reach, but never can exceed in amplitude,

The limits of the self that is their master.

So those of Hamlet span the world, while those

Of meager Horatio, by slim addition,

Total the fools that he has listened to

In a long and wicked life. In their behalf

His shrewdest thrusts were made. A stranger, coming

All unprepared to this document on my table,

Reading at random might well conclude that I

Was Hamlet's bitterest enemy. If, as I thought,

My damning words were only conditional,

Figures of rhetoric, the sly admissions

Made by an advocate of skill who turns

To execute a brilliant defense, the feinting

Retreat that serves the seasoned general

As prologue for attack—where are they then:

The unconditional words, the unrhetorical

Statements of fact and truth, the defense, the attack?

If at the end of seventy speechless years