First Impressions

It is not right to judge a man
  By hasty glance or passing whim,
Or think that first impressions can
  Tell all there is to know of him.

Who knows what weight of weariness
  The man we rashly judge may bear,
The burden of his loneliness.
  His blighted hopes, his secret care.

A pompous guise or air of pride
  May only be an outward screen,
A compensation meant to hide
  A baffled will, a grief unseen.

However odd a person seems,
  However strange his ways may be,
Within each human spirit gleams
  A spark of true divinity.

So what can first impressions tell?
  Unthinking judgments will not do,
Who really knows a person well
  May also come to like him too!

--Alfred Grant Walton