In this world and the next:

"Refuse to him that asketh "

Is how they read the text.

But heed not thou, fair England,
The pomps of other lands,

Their palaces and temples

Built up by hireling hands.

Whilst in thy free soil rooted

The free-will offering stands.

The Hospital and Alms-house
Where age may lay its head,
And the sick man may be tended,
And the starving man be fed,
Are better shrines and prouder

Than trophies blazed with gold; And nobler worth than gorgeous piles,

And pillared naves and glittering aisles, Where peoples' hearts are cold.

And of the thousand fame-scrolls

Our English scutcheons lift,

I hold the grandest, best of all,

That writing, plain on many a wall, Prophetic against fear or fall,

"SUPPORTED BY FREE GIFT."

IN MEDIEVOS.

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 youv'e 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 any better than Nero,

And Cromwell an angel in ev'rything except the wings.

Or if you weep sonnets,

Over TIME, and on its

Everlasting works of "art" and "genius" cobweb wreath'd!) And fly off into rapture

At some villanous old picture

Not an 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!