With uncouth words they tire their tender lungs,

The same bald phrases on their hundred tongues;

‘Ever’ ‘The Ages’ in their page appear,

‘Alway’ the bedlamite is called a ‘Seer;’

On every leaf the ‘earnest’ sage may scan,

Portentious bore! their ‘many-sided’ man;

A weak eclectic, groping, vague and dim,

Whose every angle is a half-starved whim,

Blind as a mole and curious as a lynx,

Who rides a beetle which he calls a ‘Sphinx.’