A mottled scar, a weather-mark!

How halt am I, how mean of birth,

Beside this darting pulse of earth!

I only have the wit to look

Into a big presumptuous book,

To find some sage’s rigid plan

To tell me how to be a man.

Tradition lays its dead hand cold

Upon our youth—and we are old.

But this wise hermit, this gray friar,