No more the tyrant stern or judge severe,
He feels the father’s and the husband’s fear. 
   Ah! little think the timid trembling crowd,
That one so wise, so powerful, and so proud,
Should feel himself, and dread the humble ills
Of rent-day charges, and of coalman’s bills;
That while they mercy from their judge implore,
He fears himself—­a knocking at the door;
And feels the burthen as his neighbour states
His humble portion to the parish-rates. 
   They sit th’ alloted hours, then eager run,
Rushing to pleasure when the duty’s done;
His hour of leisure is of different kind,
Then cares domestic rush upon his mind,
And half the ease and comfort he enjoys,
Is when surrounded by slates, books, and boys. 
   Poor Reuben Dixon has the noisiest school
Of ragged lads, who ever bow’d to rule;
Low in his price—­the men who heave our coals,
And clean our causeways, send him boys in shoals;
To see poor Reuben, with his fry beside, —
Their half-check’d rudeness and his half-scorn’d pride, —
Their room, the sty in which th’ assembly meet,
In the close lane behind the Northgate-street;
T’observe his vain attempts to keep the peace,
Till tolls the bell, and strife and troubles cease, —
Calls for our praise; his labour praise deserves,
But not our pity; Reuben has no nerves: 
’Mid noise and dirt, and stench, and play, and prate,
He calmly cuts the pen or views the slate. 
   But Leonard!—­yes, for Leonard’s fate I grieve,
Who loaths the station which he dares not leave: 
He cannot dig, he will not beg his bread,
All his dependence rests upon his head;
And deeply skill’d in sciences and arts,
On vulgar lads he wastes superior parts. 
   Alas! what grief that feeling mind sustains,
In guiding hands and stirring torpid brains;
He whose proud mind from pole to pole will move,
And view the wonders of the worlds above;
Who thinks and reasons strongly:  —­hard his fate,
Confined for ever to the pen and slate: 
True, he submits, and when the long dull day
Has slowly pass’d, in weary tasks, away,
To other worlds with cheerful view he looks,
And parts the night between repose and books. 
   Amid his labours, he has sometimes tried
To turn a little from his cares aside;
Pope, Milton, Dryden, with delight has seized,
His soul engaged and of his trouble eased: 
When, with a heavy eye and ill-done sum,
No part conceived, a stupid boy will come;
Then Leonard first subdues the rising frown,
And bids the blockhead lay his blunders down;
O’er which disgusted he will turn his eye,
To his sad duty his sound mind apply,
And, vex’d in spirit, throw his pleasures by. 
   Turn we to Schools which more than these afford —
The sound instruction and the wholesome board;
And first our School for Ladies;—­pity calls
For one soft sigh, when we behold these walls,