Classic Poem

Bred at the Public Schools

To you, then, tenants of life's middle state,
Securely placed between the small and great,
Whose character, yet undebauched, retains
Two-thirds of all the virtue that remains,
Who wise yourselves, desire your sons should learn
Your wisdom and your ways — to you I turn.
Look round you on a world perversely blind;
See what contempt is fall'n on human kind;
See wealth abused, and dignities misplaced,
Great titles, offices, and trusts disgraced,
Long lines of ancestry, renowned of old,
Their noble qualities all quenched and cold;
See Bedlam's closeted and handcuffed charge
Surpassed in frenzy by the mad at large;
See great commanders making war a trade,
Great lawyers, lawyers without study made;
Churchmen, in whose esteem their blest employ
Is odious, and their wages all their joy,
Who, far enough from furnishing their shelves
With gospel lore, turn infidel themselves;
See womanhood despised, and manhood shamed
With infamy too nauseous to be named,
Fops at all corners, lady-like in mien,
Civeted fellows, smelt ere they are seen;
Else coarse and rude in manners, and their tongue
On fire with curses, and with nonsense hung,
Now flushed with drunk'ness, now with whoredom pale,
Their breath a sample of last night's regale;
See volunteers in all the vilest arts,
Men well endowed of honourable parts,
Designed by nature wise, but self-made fools;
All these, and more like these, were bred at schools!
And, if it chance, as sometimes chance it will,
That, though school-bred, the boy be virtuous still,
Such rare exceptions, shining in the dark,
Prove, rather than impeach, the just remark;
As here and there a twinkling ray descried
Serves but to show how black is all beside.