e’en critics criticise; that holds
       Inquisitive attention, while I read. 
       Fast bound in chains of silence, which the fair,
       Though eloquent themselves, yet fear to break: 
       What is it, but a map of busy life,
       Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns? 
       Here runs the mountainous and craggy ridge,
       That tempts ambition.  On the summit, see,
       The seals of office glitter in his eyes;
       He climbs, he pants, he grasps them!  At his heels. 
       Close at his heels, a demagogue ascends,
       And with a dext’rous jerk, soon twists him
       And wins them, but to lose them in his turn. 
       Here rills of oily eloquence in soft
       Meanders lubricate the course they take;
       The modest speaker is asham’d and grieved
       To engross a moment’s notice; and yet begs. 
       Begs a propitious ear for his poor thoughts,
       However trivial all that he conceives. 
       Sweet bashfulness! it claims at least this praise;
       The dearth of information and good sense,
       That it foretells us, always comes to pass. 
       Cataracts of declamation thunder here;
       There forests of no meaning spread the page,
       In which all comprehension wanders lost;
       While fields of pleasantry amuse us there
       With merry descants on a nation’s woes. 
       The rest appears a wilderness of strange
       But gay confusion; roses for the cheeks,
       And lilies for the brows of faded age,
       Teeth for the toothless, ringlets for the bald,
       Heaven, earth, and ocean, plunder’d of their sweets,
       Nectareous essences, Olympian dews,
       Sermons, and city feasts, and fav’rite airs,
       Ethereal journeys, submarine exploits. 
       And Katerfelto, with his hair on end
       At his own wonders, wond’ring for his bread.

       ’Tis pleasant, through the loopholes of retreat,
       To peep at such a world; to see the stir
       Of the great Babel, and not feel the crowd;
       To hear the roar she sends through all her gates
       At a safe distance, where the dying sound
       Falls a soft murmur on the uninjur’d ear. 
       Thus sitting, and surveying thus at ease
       The globe and its concerns, I seem advanc’d
       To some secure and more than mortal height. 
       That liberates and exempts me from them all
       It turns submitted to my view, turns round
       With all its generations; I behold
       The tumult, and am still.  The sound of war
       Has lost its terrors ere it reaches me;
       Grieves, but alarms me not.  I mourn the pride
       And avarice that make man a wolf to man;
       Hear the faint echo of those brazen throats
       By which he speaks the language of his heart,
       And sigh, but never tremble at the bound.