They’ll always be beginners
So long as they live and strive
For example Rembrandt and Shakespeare
In the nascence of bourgeois society
When even eminent practitioners
Served as servants to the great titled or not
And stood alongside those with the knack
For fletching shafts or spitting beeves
Always scraping for patrons
For then as now imagination butters no parsnips
Though it brews a strange brew never tasted
And the player went down to Stratford
And purchased himself a coat of arms
Having elevated sock and buskin
Henries and Richards and puckish fays
And made a name for himself and his company
After attempting the coterie works
Reserved by earl and leisurely marquis
And those who strolled at the universities
His gown the costume of the town
And ceased even before death stayed his hand
And the painter befriended city guardians
And earned their coin
As they strode into the light
And saw his fortune dwindle
And his friends pass with his wealth
He too enamored of theatrical appurtenances
The robe the coronet the casket of jewels
To don a turban and extend an ineffectual scepter
They towered up of artists kings
And thus rulers of shadows
But for earthly monarchs the rod of sway
Accompanies lightly the sublunary birth
And while artists may dwell among the stars
Theirs is a destiny evermore aborning
And who would daub canvas or stitch verse
Toils like a sophomore
And chooses the subaltern’s fame