My Earnestness by Edna St. Vincent Millay — Read

My earnestness, which might at first offend, / Forgive me, for the duty it implies:

I am the convoy to the cloudy end

Of a most bright and regal enterprise; Which under angry constellations, ill-Mounted and under-rationed and unspurred, / Set forth to find if any country still

Might do obeisance to an honest word. Duped and delivered up to rascals; bound

And bleeding, and his mouth stuffed; on his knees;

Robbed and imprisoned; and adjudged unsound; I have beheld my master, if you please. Forgive my earnestness, who at his side

Received his swift instructions, till he died.