Aristocrat?—Who chooseth his birth star?
Crieth at Life’s gate, “Of such an house I’m heir!”
But in we drift from the great sea without;
A current takes us—“Of my house are ye!”
So you, so I, so this citoyen here,
Rémond Lalain, who is Lalain by chance,
And might have been Capet or Mirabeau!
And so this other, standing gravely there
Alone, a man alone upon a rock,
And the tide mounts!—The current swept him there!