He that reserves his laurels for posterity
    (Who does not often claim the bright reversion)
  Has generally no great crop to spare it, he
    Being only injured by his own assertion;
  And although here and there some glorious rarity
    Arise like Titan from the sea’s immersion,
  The major part of such appellants go
  To—­God knows where—­for no one else can know.

  X.

  If, fallen in evil days on evil tongues,
    Milton appealed to the Avenger, Time,
  If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs,
    And makes the word “Miltonic” mean “sublime”,
  He deign’d not to belie his soul in songs,
    Nor turn his very talent to a crime;
  He did not loathe the sire to laud the son,
  But closed the tyrant-hater he begun.

  XI.

  Think’st thou, could he—­the blind old man—­arise,
    Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze once more
  The blood of monarchs with his prophecies,
    Or be alive again—­again all hoar
  With time and trials, and those helpless eyes,
    And heartless daughters—­worn—­and pale—­and poor: 
  Would he adore a sultan? he obey
  The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh?

  XII.

  Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid miscreant! 
    Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin’s gore,
  And thus for wider carnage taught to pant,
    Transferr’d to gorge upon a sister shore,
  The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want,
    With just enough of talent, and no more,
  To lengthen fetters by another fix’d. 
  And offer poison long already mix’d.

  XIII.

  An orator of such set trash of phrase
    Ineffably—­legitimately vile,
  That even its grossest flatterers dare not praise,
    Nor foes—­all nations—­condescend to smile;
  Not even a sprightly blunder’s spark can blaze
    From that Ixion grindstone’s ceaseless toil,
  That turns and turns to give the world a notion
  Of endless torments and perpetual motion.

  XIV.

  A bungler even in its disgusting trade,
    And botching, patching, leaving still behind
  Something of which its masters are afraid,
    States to be curb’d, and thoughts to be confined,
  Conspiracy or Congress to be made—­
    Cobbling at manacles for all mankind—­
  A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains,
  With God and man’s abhorrence for its gains.

  XV.

  If we may judge of matter by the mind,
    Emasculated to the marrow It
  Hath but two objects, how to serve, and bind,
    Deeming the chain it wears even men may fit,
  Eutropius of its many masters,—­blind
    To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit,
  Fearless—­because no feeling dwells in ice,
  Its very courage stagnates to a vice.

  XVI.