Thick as the locusts which in Egypt swarmed,
With pride and hungry hopes completely armed;
With native truth, diseases, and no money,
Plundered our Canaan of the milk and honey.
Here they grew quickly lords and gentlemen,--
And all their race are true-born Englishmen.

* * * * *

The wonder which remains is at our pride,
To value that which all wise men deride.
For Englishmen to boast of generation
Cancels their knowledge, and lampoons the nation.
A true-born Englishman's a contradiction,
In speech an irony, in fact a fiction;
A banter made to be a test of fools,
Which those that use it justly ridicules;
A metaphor invented to express
A man akin to all the universe.



FROM A HYMN TO THE PILLORY

Hail hieroglyphic state-machine,
Contrived to punish fancy in!
Men that are men in thee can feel no pain,
And all thy insignificants disdain.
Contempt, that false new word for shame,
Is, without crime, an empty name,