V.

Thou, too, couldst sing about her sweet salt sea,
And trumpet pæans loud to Liberty,
With clamour of all applausive throats. Thy feet,
Not wine-press red, yet left the flowers more sweet,
From the pure passage of the god to be;
And then couldst thunder praises of England's Fleet.

VI.

I did not think to glorify gods and kings,
Who scourged them ever with hate's sanguineous rods;
But who with hope and faith may live at odds?
And then these jingling jays with plume-plucked wings,
Compete, and laureate laurels _are_ lovely things,
Though crowing lyric lauders of kings and gods!

Beshrew the blatant bleating of sheep-voiced mimes!
True thunder shall strike dumb their chirping chimes.
If there _be_ laureate laurels, or bays, or palms,
In these red, Radical, revelling, riotous times,
They should be the true bard's, though mid-age calms
His revolutionary fierce rolling rhymes,
Fulfilled with clamour and clangour and storm of--psalms

That great lyre's golden echoes rolled away!
Forth tripped another claimant of the bay.
Trim, tittivated, tintinnabulant,
His bosom aped the true Parnassian pant,