Parleyings with Certain People of Importance…

I

Ah, George Bubb Dodington Lord Melcombe, -- no, / Yours was the wrong way! -- always understand, / Supposing that permissibly you planned / How statesmanship -- your trade -- in outward show / Might figure as inspired by simple zeal / For serving country, king and commonweal, / (Though service tire to death the body, tease / The soul from out an o'ertasked patriot-drudge) / And yet should prove zeal's outward show agrees / In all respects -- right reason being judge -- / With inward care that, while the statesman spends / Body and soul thus freely for the sake / Of public good, his private welfare take / No harm by such devotedness. Intends / Scripture aught else -- let captious folk inquire -- / Which teaches "Laborers deserve their hire, / And who neglects his household bears the bell / Away of sinning from an infidel"? / Wiselier would fools that carp bestow a thought / How birds build nests; at outside, roughly wrought, / Twig knots with twig, loam plasters up each chink, / Leaving the inmate rudely lodged -- you think? / Peep but inside! That specious rude-and-rough / Covers a domicile where downy fluff / Embeds the ease-deserving architect, / Who toiled and moiled not merely to effect / 'Twixt sprig and spray a stop-gap in the teeth / Of wind and weather, guard what swung beneath / From upset only, but contrived himself / A snug interior, warm and soft and sleek. / Of what material? Oh, for that, you seek / How nature prompts each volatile! Thus -- pelf / Smoothens the human mudlark's lodging, power / Demands some hardier wrappage to embrace / Robuster heart-beats: rock, not tree nor tower, / Contents the building eagle: rook shoves close / To brother rook on branch, while crow morose / Apart keeps balance perched on topmost bough. / No sort of bird but suits his taste somehow: / Nay, Darwin tells of such as love the bower -- / His bower-birds opportunely yield us yet / The lacking instance when at loss to get / A feathered parallel to what we find / The secret motor of some mighty mind / That worked such wonders -- all for vanity! / Worked them to haply figure in the eye / Of intimates as first of -- doers' kind? / Actors', that work in earnest sportively, / Paid by a sourish smile. How says the Sage? / Birds born to strut prepare a platform-stage / With sparkling stones and speckled shells, all sorts / Of slimy rubbish, odds and ends and orts, / Whereon to pose and posture and engage / The priceless female simper.