A PORTRAIT OF 1783. Your hair and chin are like the hair And chin Burne-Jones's ladies wear; You were unfashionably fair And sad you were when girls are gay, You read a book about Le vrai Mérite de l'homme, alone in May. What can it be, Le vrai mérite de l'homme? Not gold, Not titles that are bought and sold, Not wit that flashes and is cold, But Virtue merely! Instructed by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (And Jean-Jacques, surely, ought to know), You bade the crowd of foplings go, You glanced severely, Dreaming beneath the spreading shade Of "that vast hat the Graces made";[2] So Rouget sang—while yet he played With courtly rhyme, And hymned great Doisi's red perruque, And Nice's eyes, and Zulmé's look, And dead canaries, ere he shook The sultry time With strains like thunder. Loud and low Methinks I hear the murmur grow, The tramp of men that come and go With fire and sword. They war against the quick and dead, Their flying feet are dashed with red, As theirs the vintaging that tread Before the Lord. O head unfashionably fair, What end was thine, for all thy care? We only see thee dreaming there: We cannot see The breaking of thy vision, when The Rights of Man were lords of men, When virtue won her own again In '93. What can it be, But Virtue merely! You glanced severely, With courtly rhyme, The sultry time With fire and sword. Before the Lord. We cannot see In '93. THE BARBAROUS BIRD-GODS: A SAVAGE PARABASIS. [The myth in the "Birds" of Aristophanes, which represents Birds as older than the Gods, may have been a genuine Greek tradition. The following lines show how prevalent is the myth among widely severed races. The Mexican Bird-gods I omit; who can rhyme to Huitzilopochtli?] The Birds Sing: We would have you to wit, that on eggs though we sit, and are spiked on the spit, and are baked in the pan, Birds are older by far than your ancestors are, and made love and made war ere the making of Man! For when all things were dark, not a
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