To a philosophy of hang-and-let-hang.

“Now you know how it feels,” my brother said,

“To be a bunch of fox-grapes, as they call them,

That when it thinks it has escaped the fox

By growing where it shouldn’t—on a birch,

Where a fox wouldn’t think to look for it—

And if he looked and found it, couldn’t reach it—

Just then come you and I to gather it.

Only you have the advantage of the grapes

In one way: you have one more stem to cling by,