If all your office had to do With old results that look like new; If this were all your mission here, To draw, to sheathe a useless sword, To fool t… - Alfred Tennyson

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If all your office had to do
With old results that look like new;
If this were all your mission here,

To draw, to sheathe a useless sword,
To fool the crowd with glorious lies,
To cleave a creed in sects and cries,
To change the bearing of a word,

To shift an arbitrary power,
To cramp the student at his desk,
To make old barreness picturesque
And tuft with grass a feudal tower;

Why then my scorn might well descend
On you and yours.

Verse CXXVII