Or the Censor's black blurr shall your slander efface
A CÆSAR turn sophist, an Autocrat shrink?
Pusillanimous spite mark the ROMANOFF race?
Too wholly absurd! What is this we have heard
Which on courtier spirits must painfully jar?
Who is he, this mal à propos "little bird"
Who twitters such tales of the White-livered CZAR?
The Wolf and the Lamb? We all know that old tale.
But the Wolf, though a tyrant, was scarcely a cur.
He bullied and lied, but he didn't turn pale,