That breeding heroes once was England's boast, And now we brag of making millionaires. Your 'practical' means shortest cut to wealth: But far too frequently purse robs the heart; One growing heavy drains the other dry. His style, poetically pregnant, oft By note of admiration merely, hints More than crammed Pro Con of your favourite's page." At this he shouts a scornful roaring laugh, The table shaking, and the vessels chinked As fell his weighty arm: with massive gaze In hurly-burly sort he bantered me: "Young bubble-dreamer, plotting stanza rhymes, What can you know of laws: what know of plans Which bound these varied interests of ours, Through crossing currents, fixed for certain ends, To frame this state we call society, The full outcome of immemorial time? Know, here on earth wealth must not be despised, For we are as we are. While men subsist By interchanging goods and service, gold Will be the grease that smooths the whole machine. I grant a few, the greatest, live content To give forth what has ripened in their minds; But greed alone brings each result to grow And spread its uses through the mass. Beside Where honour, reason, or instinctive life, Quite fails, there gold will prick the sluggard loon. It wakes the drowsy lounger of the East, Who lolls in sunshine idle as a gourd, To toil like Irish hodmen. Roused, he hears Coin ringing lively music; falls to work, And digs, and hews, and grinds: he sees, not far, Himself, a chief of horsemen richly clad, Armed with long spears and silver-halted blades, Seizing pachalic power by a swift blow. But labour, having brought him gold, brings fears. The weight of wealth has made his footfall staid; He longs for order, settled government, And stands, a stern upholder, by the law.