I’d lie so, I should be believed. 
I’d make such havoc of the claims 90
Of the day’s distinguished names
To feast him with, as feasts an ogress
Her feverish sharp-toothed gold-crowned child! 
Or as one feasts a creature rarely
Captured here, unreconciled
To capture; and completely gives
Its pettish humours license, barely
Requiring that it lives.

VI

Ichabod, Ichabod,
The glory is departed! 100
Travels Waring East away? 
Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,
Reports a man upstarted
Somewhere as a god,
Hordes grown European-hearted,
Millions of the wild made tame
On a sudden at his fame? 
In Vishnu-land what Avatar? 
Or who in Moscow, toward the Czar,
With the demurest of footfalls 110
Over the Kremlin’s pavement bright
With serpentine and syenite,
Steps, with five other Generals
That simultaneously take snuff,
For each to have pretext enough
And kerchiefwise unfold his sash
Which, softness’ self, is yet the stuff
To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,
And leave the grand white neck no gash? 
Waring in Moscow, to those rough 120
Cold northern natures born perhaps,
Like the lambwhite maiden dear
>From the circle of mute kings
Unable to repress the tear,
Each as his sceptre down he flings,
To Dian’s fane at Taurica,
Where now a captive priestess, she alway
Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech
With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach
As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands 130
Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands
Where breed the swallows, her melodious cry
Amid their barbarous twitter! 
In Russia?  Never!  Spain were fitter! 
Ay, most likely ’tis in Spain
That we and Waring meet again
Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane
Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid
All fire and shine, abrupt as when there’s slid
Its stiff gold blazing pall 140
>From some black coffin-lid. 
Or, best of all,
I love to think
The leaving us was just a feint;
Back here to London did he slink,
And now works on without a wink
Of sleep, and we are on the brink
Of something great in fresco-paint: 
Some garret’s ceiling, walls and floor,
Up and down and o’er and o’er 150
He splashes, as none splashed before
Since great Caldara Polidore. 
Or Music means this land of ours
Some favour yet, to pity won
By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers—­
“Give me my so-long promised son,
Let Waring end what I begun!”
Then down he creeps and out he steals
Only when the night conceals
His face; in Kent ’tis cherry-time,