The common problem, yours, mine, every one's,

Is—not to fancy what were fair in life

Provided it could be,—but, finding first

What may be, then find how to make it fair

Up to our means: a very different thing!

No abstract intellectual plan of life

Quite irrespective of life's plainest laws,

But one, a man, who is man and nothing more,

May lead within a world which (by your leave)

Is Rome or London, not Fool's-paradise.