Yon whey-faced brother, who delights to wear A weedy flux of ill-conditioned hair, Seems of the sort that in a crowded place One elbows freely into smallest space; A timid creature, lax of knee and hip, Whom small disturbance whitens round the lip; One of those harmless, spectacled machines, Ignored by waiters when they call for greens, Whom schoolboys question it their walk transcends The last advices of maternal friends, _Whom John, obedient to his master’s sign_, _Conduct laborious, up to ninety-nine_, While Peter, glistening with luxurious scorn, Husks his white ivories like an ear of corn; Dark in the brow and bilious in the cheek, Whose yellowish linen flowers but once a week, Conspicuous, annual, in their threadbare suits, And the laced high-lows which they call their boots. Well may’st thou _shun_ that dingy front severe, But him, O stranger, him thou canst not _fear_! Be slow to judge, and slower to despise, Man of broad shoulders and heroic size! The tiger, writhing from the boa’s rings, Drops at the fountain where the cobra stings. In that lean phantom, whose extended glove Points to the text of universal love, Behold the master that can tame thee down To crouch, the vassal of his Sunday frown; His velvet throat against thy corded wrist, His loosened tongue against thy doubled fist! The MORAL BULLY, though he never swears, Nor kicks intruders down his entry stairs, Though meekness plants his backward sloping hat, And non-resistance ties his white cravat, Though his black broadcloath glories to be seen In the same plight with Shylock’s gaberdine, Hugs the same passion to his narrow breast, That heaves the cuirass on the trooper’s chest. — Heaven keep us all! Is every rascal clown, Whose arm is stronger, free to knock us down? Has every scarecrow, whose cachetic soul Seems fresh from Bedlam, airing on parole, Who, though he carries but a doubtful trace Of angel visits on his hungry face, From lack of marrow or the coins to pay, Has dodged some vices in a shabby way, The right to stick us with his cut-throat terms, _And bait his homilies with his brother worms_?