F you love to wear

An unlimited extent of hair

Push'd frantically back behind a pair

Of ears, that all asinine comparison defy—

And peripatate by star light

To gaze upon some far light

Till you've caught an aggravated catarrh right

In the pupil of your frenzy rolling eye,—

Or if you're given to the style

Of that mad fellow Tom Carlyle,

And fancy all the while, you're taking "an earnest view" of things;

Making Rousseau a hero,

Mahomet better than Nero,

And Cromwell an angel in ev'rything except the wings:

Or if you write sonnets,

In (and out of) Time and on its

Everlasting "works of art and genius" (cobweb wreath'd!)

And fly off into rapture

At some villanous old picture

Not one atom like nature

Nor any human creature, that ever breath'd,—

Some Amazonian Vixen

Of indescribable complexion

And hideous all conception to surpass;

And actually prefer this abhorrence

To a lovely portrait by Sir Thomas Lawrence——

Why then—I think that you must be an Ass!