It might have shed a blessing. Fortune’s smile,
Unto the favored, clothes the earth with flowers;
Its frown, alas! will make the brightest spot
Black as a demon’s glance—its fruit as bitter
As the Dead Sea’s—and like it naught but ashes!
The meanest thing,
Infuriated in the hunter’s toils,
Turns at the last with fierce and vengeful cry
To battle with its foe; and some there are,
Lost to all hope, in their own quiv’ring flesh