To lay all low and simplify the flowery vast;
That so, all beauty cloaked, all squalor hid, the same,
All glorious hues, all hideous sights, be rendered tame.
The leaf’s fall to such thorn more grateful is than spring;
The ruby and the flint are one in tithesman’s ring.685
True, that the gardener’s eye in winter knows the thorn;
But what is one eye’s scrutiny to general scorn!
The vulgar public is, as ’twere, one witless wight;
Each star’s a clipping of the moon, in its fond sight.
Not so great men of wisdom, radiant with troth,