Come , thou reflective jade, thou dear deceit,
Soft-garmented, sweet-smiling Flattery;
I would look nearer, in the cup thou bearest;—
That cup, with blinding jewels close incrusted,
Set round and round with gems, out-lustering
The heaven-delighting circle of the sun.

How many eyes, that pierced the smoke of battle,
And through the fierce flames of adversity
Held steady gaze upon their distant aim.
Have by these glinting rays at last been dazzled,
Charmed from their firm intent, and led to folly:
Relaxed their fixed and purpose-bended brows
For foolish blinkings:—pleased with lying glisters.
What holds thy cup within that star-girt hollow,
What potent distillations hide therein?
That men—like fever-maddened beasts, which crowd
The round marge of some desert-springing pool—
Should press and fight and tread each other down;
Glad of one swift glance from thy favoring eye,
Glad if thy cup but touch their thirsting lips.

What souls-bane must be in that deadly ooze,
To strip from Dignity, his stately robes,
And set him groveling with the dusty beggar:
What meadow-saffron and fools-parsley is it,
To tickle thus the palate of the world.

Not drop-wort, foxglove, hemlock, nor the night-shade,
Thorn-apple, monkshood, nor the yew-tree's berry,
Nor all these joined, were poison like to thine;
Thine—to make fools with, at thy smiling pleasure.

Most dangerous, mightiest sorceress of earth,
Thou, with a pin-point's burthen of thy drug,
Mayst change the cool and steadfast heart of Age,
And, straight, he'll follow thy fantastic dance,
White hairs and reverend right, alike forget,
With wisdom's garb—wrought by the patient years—
Turned to the motley livery of the clown.

Call thou but softly, in the silent streets
Where, from the lintels grim decorum frowns
Above the placid fronting of the portals;
Where scarce a whisper from the far-off world
Breaks the religious quiet;—speak thou, soft;
And though white Beauty hath cried long unheard,
Or Right, with unavailing voice, hath shouted,
Thy voice shall strike on the sequestered ear
Of vanity, loud as a trumpet's blast.

The small-great man of office, at thy beck
Takes on a ponderous-jointed, solemn port,
With governmental, slow-proceeding steps,
Such as befit his figure, as he sees it,
Reflected in the bubble of his glory.

The heavy visaged judge, whose easy nerves
Well cased in restful flesh, will let him sleep
Through half the year, amidst his drowsing cases,
As doth the miller when the wheel runs slow
Snore out the grist, soothed by his grumbling mill,
Will—with one speech of thine buzzed in his ear,
To tickle up the nile-worm in his brain—
Start from the lawful habit of his nature
And fall to capering in his musty gown.

The staid, and reminiscent ancient dame,
Laced with fine wrinkles, like green-gathered fruit
Long dried and shriveled in the summer's sun;
Whose fancies, one might think, would scarcely stir
Beyond large print and comfortable wraps;
With thy insinuating whispers pleased,
Looks into thy false mirror, and accepts,
With school-girl simperings, what seems pictured there.

The slow-filled sac, which feeds the cobra's fang
And arms its hollow with the strength of death
Against the wholesome world of living nature,
Is not more fatal to the body's life,
Than is thy poison to the spirit's health.
Fair-favored, like the angel thou art not,
Thy honeyed words may win, where every fiend
That seeks the soul's destruction hath been baffled.

Thy art tricks out, with flowers, the path of ruin
Before the feet of virgin innocence;
And sets the glittering gates of thy vain-heaven
Close on the slant and dangerous verge of hell.

Thou art for all times, and thy days are one
With all the days this turning earth shall know.
No string so fine, but answers thy skilled hand,
No twisted cow's-horn but thou'lt tune its hollow,
No wrist but thou wilt bind it with a bracelet,
No finger but thou'lt round it with a ring,
No heart thou wilt not girdle with a ribband
Tinctured to suit, sealed with a perfumed wafer,
Fixed, by the gentle pressure of thy thumb;
No cap but thou wilt fit it with a feather,
Curled, like the fancy of the fool who wears it.

Let him that dreams of greatness, learn betimes,
To take thee at thy worth, or stop his ears
Against thy voice, and turn his heart to steel,
Lest he be tangled by thy blandishments.
Sincerity doth scorn thy touch, and yet
Thou art not all ungentle, all unkind;
When so thou dost persuade the stricken wretch—
With Death's black dagger rankling in his bosom—
That Life, not yet, hath turned her face from him;
But that, with scent of pines, and mountain airs,
A little courage and kind friends to cheer,
He shall make shift to weather out the battle:
Then prescient pity fills the heart with tears,
For sorrow hath made brothers of all men,
And kindlier seems thy falseness, then, than truth.

And thou!—Be thou content, for though some brows
May frown upon thy tenderest advances,
Yet all the world is half in love with thee,
And none of Adam's race doth truly hate thee.

Go thou thy ways:—for half thy moods are gentle;
More moving heaven to laughter than to tears.
Go, hunt thy quarry round the spinning earth.
Man—male and female—motley-molded man,

From every crack and cranny thou shall start them;
Fools, schooled and unschooled, costly robed and ragged,
Fat fools and lean, fools, knowing that they are,
With millions knowing not—and millions more,
Well knowing that they are not , though they be;
Saints, hypocrites and sinners, dipt and sprinkled,
Full-pulsed, or marrow-cold and feeble-hearted,
Deep—dull—and shallow-headed, proud and pious,
Clear-skinned and freckled fools, fond and unwilling.
Go—please and poison, till the sun's last setting;
These be thy fiddle-sticks. All, when thou say'st.
Must scrape the cat-gut for the gleeful fiends.