Vexed soul, seek out some other shore; Houses are castles here no more; Vain in the penny-age to fly From all the penny-trumpetry: Or hide thee from the watchful zeal Of those who serve the weekly meal For jaded gluttons, keen to gloat On savoury sauce of Anecdote. Yet let nor cook nor eaters rue, The eaten seem to like it too, For in Society's new game Cooks, food, and eaters are the same, And Fashion, spider-like, supplies Her self-spun web to catch her flies! Thou boastful "Spirit of the Time," Wake prose itself to angry rhyme! Soon shall the dark forbid the light To any hand with power to write, And the new myriad scribbling-race, Like locusts shroud all Sense's face, Rushing (where angels are not seen) Into the _Prigs' Own Magazine_, While Upper-Tens profusely scrawl In grammar from the servants' hall, Till Ink itself shall blush to tint Nothing but amateurs in print, And the true child of letters learn He has no space to breathe or turn, And scorn accept the Century's plan, That all may write, save those who can. I turn me, wearied, at my desk, From the last "thinker's" last burlesque The last Agnostic's windy plea That none knows anything, but he, In English carefully destroyed To hide his meaning's outer void; And, bowing to the wisdoms old, Read simpler lessons writ in gold: And would but in a single word The "Spirit of the Age" be heard, Let him take up his glass and see His image this--Vulgarity. MARIUS. [Footnote 9: "_Si Natura negat, facit indignatio versum._"] [Sidenote: _The Spirit of the Time_]