Page:The-knickerbocker-gallery-(knickerbockergal00clarrich).djvu/623

'T was best, perhaps: yet from the Age
 When trick and traffic came;
When knights turned knaves, and ladies fair
 Grew false to woman's fame;
The Age in mincing merchant-kings
 And London tailors great;
When craft and cunning, fawn and fraud,
 Began to rule the state:

We turn, great Baron! to the men
 That crowned thy regal times,
Admire their rude, gigantic strength,
 And half forget their crimes.
The castle nursed a mighty race—
 A race of Nature's mould;
And worth meant something more than wealth,
 And grandeur, more than gold.

Those monarch earls and lion lords,
 And barons stout and brave,
Despised the crawling sycophant,
 The sleek and cringing knave;
Their grim baronial banners told
 Of battles they had fought;
Of honors passed from sire to son,
 And not of titles bought.

But trade and traffic, stock and steam,
 The platter and the plough,
The mallet and the milliner
 Are lord and lady now.
The Castle crowns the mousing mart,
 The Palace sails the deep,
Ambition mounts to bantam hens.
 And chivalry to sheep.

The Earl discusses curly blues,
 The Baron runs to seed,
And Fame combines a purgative.
 And Skill invents a mead;