Читать книгу Poems. Volume 2 - George Meredith - Страница 15

As Puritans they prominently wax,

And none more kindly gives and takes hard knocks.

Strong psalmic chanting, like to nasal cocks,

They join to thunderings of their hearty thwacks.

But naughtiness, with hoggery, not lacks

When Peace another door in them unlocks,

Where conscience shows the eyeing of an ox

Grown dully apprehensive of an Axe.

Graceless they are when gone to frivolousness,

Fearing the God they flout, the God they glut.

They need their pious exercises less

Than schooling in the Pleasures: fair belief

That these are devilish only to their thief,

Charged with an Axe nigh on the occiput.