IN MEDIÆVOS.
F you love to wear
An unlimited extent of hair
Push'd frantically back behind a pair
Of ears, that all asinine comparison defy—
And peripatate by star light
To gaze upon some far light
Till you've caught an aggravated catarrh right
In the pupil of your frenzy rolling eye,—
Or if you're given to the style
Of that mad fellow Tom Carlyle,
And fancy all the while, you're taking "an earnest view" of things;
Making Rousseau a hero,
Mahomet better than Nero,
And Cromwell an angel in ev'rything except the wings:
Or if you write sonnets,
In (and out of) Time and on its
Everlasting "works of art and genius" (cobweb wreath'd!)
And fly off into rapture
At some villanous old picture
Not one atom like nature
Nor any human creature, that ever breath'd,—
Some Amazonian Vixen
Of indescribable complexion
And hideous all conception to surpass;
And actually prefer this abhorrence
To a lovely portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence——
Why then—I think that you must be an Ass!
