First Known When Lost: Perspective, Part Three: "Our Windows, Too, Are Clouded Glass"

First Known When Lost: Perspective, Part Three: "Our Windows, Too, Are Clouded Glass"
Excerpt:
We live in a world of shameless self-promotion, overweening egotism, and dubious, spurious, and/or ill-gotten "accomplishments."  What evidence supports this assertion?  Any head-of-state that you can name.  And any "celebrity" that you can name.

Of course, this has always been the way of the world...Never in a million years would it occur to them that Charlotte Mew is trying to tell us something about ourselves, something that we ignore at peril to our souls.
...Theirs is the house whose windows -- every pane --
     Are made of darkly stained or clouded glass:
...None but ourselves in our long gallery we meet,
     The moor-hen stepping from her reeds with dainty feet,
          The hare-bell bowing on his stem,
Dance not with us; their pulses beat
     To fainter music; nor do we to them
               Make their life sweet.
...