In praise of counsel soundly based

On knowledge and discerning tastea

‘WHO’, SAID THE CYNIC, ‘is the one whose lips

With fine speech and perceptiveness eclipse

Counsel?b Thou braggest, “Doctrine pure I teach:c

Do I, to mere mankind, address my speech?”d

The mind of simple folk, who drag their feete

When thou theologisest, thou dost treat

As fit for demolition, out of sight,

Claiming “My scheme, fully worked out, is right.”f

Nay, wisdom is an eyesore: vantage ne’er

Did come of counsel, understanding's wear

Is like to disappointment, fouled with dirt;g

Why, Scripture's adages themselves assert

God's is the only utterance refined,h

Desirable. No wisdom do we find

Compares with His, as Lord of truth:j no sort

Of counsel, no perception, is worth aught.

Indeed, the chief of our anointed kings,

Reckoned amongst our leading sages, sings

The simple-minded God Himself protects.k

And one who, for his own high road, selects

The gull's way of contempt, who flings asidel

Remonstrance, and ignores advice as guide,

Perchance may rise, as did a peasant once,

To wealth and rank, though he was but a dunce;

His livelihood by toil and moil he earned,m,1

And but a deaf ear to suggestions turned

Professed by one who, judging him a fool,

By crushing thought his doltishnessn to school.

But, in a storming temper, he despisedo

His high-flown speech, and all that he advised,

As though insight reeled, drunken. But his own

Numskull's purblindness—that, and that alone,

The cause was why his poor estate did mend:p

His story I rehearse, right to the end.

’Tis told there lived in lands ruled by the Turk

A man who, for his living, used to work

The soilq—a village-dweller, ranging round

Outlying farms,r the folds and open ground.

His constant labour had reduced what brain

He ever had, and left him scarcely sane

Enough his left hand from his right to know.s

For him a three days’ journeyt was to go

To where the merchant princes came to trade.

One year, upon his tenement he made

A plot of saplings, known by those who live

Off silk-production as superlative.