I’ve never lost the taste of that same tea: 
     That liquor on my logic floats like oil,
     When I state facts, and fellows disagree. 
     For human creatures all are in a coil;
     All may want pardon. 
     I see a day when every pot will boil
     Harmonious in one great Tea-garden!

     XV

     We wait the setting of the Dandy’s day,
     Before that time!—­He’s furbishing his dress, —
     He will be ready for it!—­and I say,
     That yon old dandy rat amid the cress, —
     Thanks to hard labour! —
     If cleanliness is next to godliness,
     The old fat fellow’s heaven’s neighbour!

     XVI

     You teach me a fine lesson, my old boy! 
     I’ve looked on my superiors far too long,
     And small has been my profit as my joy. 
     You’ve done the right while I’ve denounced the wrong. 
     Prosper me later! 
     Like you I will despise the sniggering throng,
     And please myself and my Creator.

     XVII

     I’ll bring the linendraper and his wife
     Some day to see you; taking off my hat. 
     Should they ask why, I’ll answer:  in my life
     I never found so true a democrat. 
     Base occupation
     Can’t rob you of your own esteem, old rat! 
     I’ll preach you to the British nation.

     Song

     Should thy love die;
     O bury it not under ice-blue eyes! 
     And lips that deny,
     With a scornful surprise,
     The life it once lived in thy breast when it wore no disguise.

     Should thy love die;
     O bury it where the sweet wild-flowers blow! 
     And breezes go by,
     With no whisper of woe;
     And strange feet cannot guess of the anguish that slumbers below.

     Should thy love die;
     O wander once more to the haunt of the bee! 
     Where the foliaged sky
     Is most sacred to see,
     And thy being first felt its wild birth like a wind-wakened tree.

     Should thy love die;
     O dissemble it! smile! let the rose hide the thorn! 
     While the lark sings on high,
     And no thing looks forlorn,
     Bury it, bury it, bury it where it was born.

     To Alex.  Smith, the ‘Glasgow poet,’ on his sonnet to ‘fame’

     Not vainly doth the earnest voice of man
     Call for the thing that is his pure desire! 
     Fame is the birthright of the living lyre! 
     To noble impulse Nature puts no ban. 
     Nor vainly to the Sphinx thy voice was raised! 
     Tho’ all thy great emotions like a sea,
     Against her stony immortality,
     Shatter themselves unheeded and amazed. 
     Time moves behind her in a blind eclipse: 
     Yet if in her cold eyes the end of all
     Be visible, as on her large closed lips
     Hangs dumb the awful riddle of the earth; —
     She sees, and she might speak, since that wild call,
     The mighty warning of a Poet’s birth.