Joel, if we differ over the "very," that's a fairly small difference!
Thanks to Robert for posting "Their Lonely Betters." I like the double trochaic substitution in line 3, even though Auden himself (in the intro to Vol. 1 of the Auden/Pearson anthology) said such variations were bad metrical practice. The phrasing strikes me as a nice conversational flourish, and a good example of the ear outsmarting the brain.
Alan Sullivan
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