And yet I say to you that Solomon,
In all his glory, was not clad like these.”
Michael De Mas knew not this holy truth;
Alas! his thought was ever of the morrow:
And yet he was no foolish homesick swain,
Such as, amid the perils of the strife,
The conflict of existence, pine and sigh
To flee to some ideal resting-place,
To feed on contemplation, or to woo
Some simple Thestylis in beechen groves.