This harmony and proportion are found most often, in Robinson's view, in lives that are otherwise undistinguished. The admonition in The Clerks reveals a permanent attitude, although in later life he would probably not have stated it so directly:

And you that ache so much to be sublime,

And you that feed yourselves with your descent,

What comes of all your visions and your fears?

Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time.