For RM

What of what others do to ease our way?

And is it but the sweat of ours that carries sway?

So though the stony manse on bronzen backs

Is hauled by gristly men who live in shacks,

Up the hillock like a mount with scarcely any breath,

Through bogs of biting bugs and swamps of sucking death,

One makes the house by living there, and not

To ope the doors to workers and their fetid feet a-rot.

To sit on leathern couch and sip the vintage fine

And sigh it all is worthy of your personage divine

And nor to greasy hands, or the skin

So pale of drafty-chilléd cheeks of kin,

Forget the jolly draughtsman, dare think not

Of avaricious lawyers with their hands in every pot;

Forget the sweaty banker and the reams

Of paper loaned to make your marble dreams.

To all the ones without a house, get set

To spittle on their heads from on your battlement.

And what of Fortune’s pricks and what of salves,

For some to dare to want to divvy up by halves!

In manor house to sit and be a man

Shows all if they work hard, they surely can.