Canto CXXVI
The love that rose on stronger wings,Unpalsied when he met with Death,Is comrade of the lesser faithThat sees the course of human things.
No doubt vast eddies in the flood,Of onward time shall yet be made.And throned races may degrade;Yet O ye ministers of good,
Wild Hours that fly with Hope and Fear,If all your office had to doWith old results that look like new,If this were all your mission here,
To draw, to sheathe a useless sword,To fool the crowd with glorious lies,To cleave a creed in sects and cries,To change the bearing of a word,
To shift an arbitrary power,To cramp the student at his desk,To make old baseness picturesqueAnd tuft with grass a feudal tower;
Why then my scorn might well descendOn you and yours. I see in partThat all, as in some piece of art,Is toil cöoperant to an end.