Vain, frantic, guilty, if thou wilt, became
A fountain of ambition and bright hope;
I thought of tales that by the winter hearth
Old gossips tell—how maidens, sprung from kings,
Have stoop'd from their high sphere; how love, like death,
Levels all ranks, and lays the shepherd's crook
Beside the scepter.
My father died; and I, the peasant born,
Was my own lord. Then did I seek to rise
Out of the prison of my mean estate;