A little humility, please

The Breakers, the most famous of the Newport man mansions.

The Breakers, the most famous of the Newport man mansions.

“The house of stone turns its back on town

To govern an Atlantic even  sky can’t stop.

Big as a museum, it keeps us off the lawn

With chain-link fences camouflaged by rose hips.

Presiding from this height, it says Look on

My works, ye Mighty and despair!’’

From Carole Simmons Oles’s “On the Cliff Walk at Newport, Rhode Island, Thinking of Percy Bysshe Shelley’’