The lords of life, the lords of life,—
I saw them pass
In their own guise,
Like and unlike,
Portly and grim,—
Use and surprise,
Surface and dream,
Succession swift, and spectral wrong,
Temperament without a tongue,
And the inventor of the game
Omnipresent without name;—
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. poet, essayist. Experience (l. 1–11). . .
Poets of the English Language, Vols. I–V. Vol. I: Langland to Spenser; Vol. II: Marlowe to Marvell; Vol. III: Milton to Goldsmith; Vol. IV: Blake to Poe; Vol. V: Tennyson to Yeats. W. H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson, eds. (1950) The Viking Press.