BEHOLD, as goblins dark of mien

And portly tyrants dyed with crime

Change, in the transformation scene,

At Christmas, in the pantomime,

Instanter, at the prompter’s cough,

The fairy bonnets them, and they

Throw their abhorred carbuncles off

And blossom like the flowers in May.

— So mankind, to angelic eyes,

So, through the scenes of life below,

In life’s ironical disguise,

A travesty of man, ye go:
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