Haydon! forgive me that I cannot speak
Definitively of these mighty things;
Forgive me, that I have not Eagle’s wings—
That what I want I know not where to seek:
And think that I would not be over meek,
In rolling out upfollow’d thunderings,
Even to the steep of Heliconian springs,
Were I of ample strength for such a freak—
Think too, that all those numbers should be thine;
Whose else? In this who touch thy vesture’s hem?
For when men star’d at what was most divine
With browless idiotism—o’erwise phlegm—
Thou hadst beheld the Hesperean shine
Of their star in the East, and gone to worship them.
Public-domain source text
To Haydon
by John Keats
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