yards of cambric.  Indeed had I the power to make you better, my little book, I would have exercised that power to the utmost.  A good conscience is a continual feast, and I summon high Heaven to be my witness that had I been Homer you had awed the world, another Iliad.  I lament your inability to do this, as heartily as any person living; yet Heaven willed it; and it is in consequence to Heaven these aforementioned cavillers should rightfully complain.

So to such impious people do you make no answer at all, unless indeed you should elect to answer them by repetition of this song which I now make for you, my little book, at your departure from me.  And the song runs in this fashion: 

  Depart, depart, my book! and live and die
  Dependent on the idle fantasy
  Of men who cannot view you, quite, as I.

  For I am fond, and willingly mistake
  My book to be the book I meant to make,
  And cannot judge you, for that phantom’s sake.

  Yet pardon me if I have wrought too ill
  In making you, that never spared the will
  To shape you perfectly, and lacked the skill.

  Ah, had I but the power, my book, then I
  Had wrought in you some wizardry so high
  That no man but had listened ...

  They pass by,
  And shrug—­as we, who know that unto us
  It has been granted never to fare thus,
  And never to be strong and glorious.

  Is it denied me to perpetuate
  What so much loving labor did create?—­
  I hear Oblivion tap upon the gate,
  And acquiesce, not all disconsolate.

  For I have got such recompense
  Of that high-hearted excellence
  Which the contented craftsman knows,
  Alone, that to loved labor goes,
  And daily does the work he chose,
  And counts all else impertinence!

EXPLICIT DECAS REGINARUM