| Hunt and Lee, comps. The Book of the Sonnet. 1867. | | | | IV. Against Pride of Intellect | | By Henry Ellison (1811–1880) |
| | | PROUD Poet, think’st thou that the mass of men, | |
| Low as they seem beneath thy fancied height, | |
| Have yet no other sources of delight, | |
| No poesy, save that of thy poor pen? | |
| Little as distance makes them to thy ken, | 5 |
| Haply that self-same distance, to their sight, | |
| Makes thee as little seem, and with more right, | |
| Who deem’st thyself not of them, and art then, | |
| And just for this, beneath them.—Is yon Sun, | |
| Rising in glory, not far better, pray, | 10 |
| Than thy description of it? the lark’s lay | |
| Itself, than all thy verses on it? one | |
| Sweet flower more than all that thou canst say, | |
| And far beyond thy best comparison? | | | | |
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