For, ever since the letter left his hand, His mind had been in vacillating motion, Dodge-dodging like a fluster’d crab on land, That cannot ask its way, and has no notion If right or left leads to the German Ocean-- Hatred and Love by turns enjoy’d monopolies, Till, like a Doctor following his own potion, Before a learned pig could spell Acropolis, He went and booked himself for our metropolis. “Oh, for a horse,” or rather four,--“with wings!” For so he put the wish into the plural-- No relish he retained for country things, He could not join felicity with rural, His thoughts were all with London and the mural, Where architects--not paupers--heap and _pile_ stones; Or with the horses’ muscles, called the crural, How fast they could macadamize the milestones Which pass’d as tediously as gall or bile stones. Blind to the picturesque, he ne’er perceived In Nature one artistical fine stroke; For instance, how that purple hill relieved The beggar-woman in the gipsy-poke, And how the red cow carried off her cloak; Or how the aged horse, so gaunt and grey, Threw off a noble mass of beech and oak! Or, how the tinker’s ass, beside the way, Came boldly out from a white cloud--to bray! Such things have no delight for worried men, That travel full of care and anxious smart: Coachmen and horses, are your artists then: Just try a team of draughtsmen with the Dart, Take Shee, for instance, Etty, Jones, and Hart, Let every neck be put into its noose, Then tip ’em on the flank to make ’em start, And see how they will draw!--Four screws let loose Would make a difference--or I’m a goose! Nor cared he more about the promised crops, If oats were looking up, or wheat was laid, For flies in turnip, or a blight in hops, Or how the barley prosper’d or decay’d; In short, no items of the farming trade. Peas, beans, tares, ’taters, could his mind beguile; Nor did he answer to the servant maid, That always asked at every other mile, “Where do we change, Sir?” with her sweetest smile. [Illustration: “LORD, JOHN, HERE’S A BURROW!”] Nor more he listened to the Politician, Who lectured on his left, a formal prig, Of Belgium’s, Greece’s, Turkey’s sad condition, Not worth a cheese, an olive, or a fig; Nor yet unto the critic, fierce and big, Who, holding forth, all lonely, in his glory, Called one a sad bad Poet--and a Whig, And one, a first-rate proser--and a Tory; So critics judge, now, of a song or story.