Baron Alfred Vere de Vere, Robe, now your bays are sere and spent: The King of Snobs is at your door, To trace your long (and deep) descent. A man's a man for a' that, And rich on forty pounds a year; If rank be the true guinea-stamp To win Parnassus--die a peer! Trust me, Baron Vere de Vere, When nobles eat their noblest words, The grand old gardener and his wife Smile at the airs of poet-lords. Howe'er it be, it seems to me, 'Tis only noble to be good. Plain souls are more than coronets, And simple lives than Baronhood. I know you, Baron Vere de Vere: You pine among your halls and bays: The jaded light of your vain eyes Is wearied with the flood of praise. In glowing fame, with boundless wealth, But sickening of a vague disease, You are so dead to simple things, You needs must play such pranks as these. Alfred, Alfred Vere de Vere, If Time be heavy on your hands, Are there no toilers in our streets, Nor any poor in all these lands? Oh! teach the weak to strive and hope, Or teach the great to help the low, Pray Heaven for a noble heart, And let the foolish title go. * * * * * For the curious in such matters I give the following extract from the _St. James's Gazette_ relating to Mr. Tennyson's lineage:--That Mr. Tennyson comes of an ancient house is generally known; not every one perhaps is aware of the number of princes, soldiers, and statesmen, famous in British or European history, from whom he can claim descent. Without pretending to give an exhaustive list of his royal and noble ancestors, it may be interesting at the present moment to point out a few of the more renowned among them. The Laureate's descent from John Savage, Earl Rivers (from which stock came Johnson's friend), implies descent from the Lady Anne, eldest sister of Edward IV., and so from sixteen English kings--namely, the first three Edwards, Henry III., John, the first two Henrys, William the Conqueror, Edmund Iron-side, Ethelred the Unready, Edgar the Peaceable, Edmund I., Edward the Elder, Alfred, Ethelwulf, and Egbert. But Edward III. was the son of Isabella, daughter of Philip the Fair, King of France, who descended from Hugh Capet, and nine intervening French Kings, among whom were Robert II., Philip Augustus, Louis VIII., and St. Louis. The last is not the only saint who figures in this splendid pedigree. The mother of Edward II. was Eleanor, daughter of Ferdinand III., King of Castle and Leon, who was canonized by Clement X. Again, through the marriage of Edmund of Langley, Duke of York, with Isabel, daughter of Peter the Cruel, Mr. Tennyson descends from Sancho the Great and Alphonso the Wise. Other crowned ancestors of the poet are the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and several Kings of Scotland, notably Malcolm III. and the "gracious Duncan," his father.