John Henry Brown

John Henry Brown Poems

The Best Poem Of John Henry Brown

Greatness

What most men hunger for yet none achieves
Save him who greatly cares not to be great,
Who knows the loom of time spins not more state
Than that small filament a spider weaves:
Since single barley-straws make piled-up sheaves,
And atoms diminute the gross earth's weight,
Nor comes from Sirius, earthward, rarer freight
Than this small taper-beam my page receives.

No greater is the desert than one sand,
The mountain than one dust-speck at its base,
The ocean than one rain-drop on my hand;
And Shakespeare's self, there in the foremost place,
Hath but in ampler measure at command
That thought which shines from rustic Hodge's face.

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