I

Chins that might serve the new Jerusalem;
Streets footsore; minute whisking milliners,
Dubbed graceful, but at whom one's eye demurs,
Knowing of England; ladies, much the same;
Bland smiling dogs with manes-a few of them
At pains to look like sporting characters;
Vast humming tabbies smothered in their furs;
Groseille, orgeat, meringues à  la crême-
Good things to study; ditto bad-the maps
Of sloshy colour in the Louvre; cinq-francs
The largest coin; and at the restaurants
Large Ibrahim Pachas in Turkish caps
To pocket them. Un million d'habitants:
Cast up, they'll make an Englishman-perhaps.


II

Tiled floors in bedrooms; trees (now run to seed-
Such seed as the wind takes) of Liberty;
Squares with new names that no one seems to see;
Scrambling Briarean passages, which lead
To the first place you came from; urgent need
Of unperturbed nasal philosophy;
Through Paris (what with church and gallery)
Some forty first-rate paintings,-or indeed
Fifty mayhap; fine churches; splendid inns;
Fierce sentinels (toy-size without the stands)
Who spit their oaths at you and grind their r's
If at a fountain you would wash your hands;
One Frenchman (this is fact) who thinks he spars:-
Can even good dinners cover all these sins?

III

Yet in the mighty French metropolis
Our time has not gone from us utterly
In waste. The wise man saith, -An ample fee
For toil, to work thine end.� Aye that it is.
Should England ask, -Was narrow prejudice
Stretched to its utmost point unflinchingly,
Even unto lying, at all times, by ye?�
We can say firmly: -Lord, thou knowest this,
Our soil may own us.� Having but small French,
Hunt passed for a stern Spartan all the while,
Uncompromising, of few words: for me-
I think I was accounted generally
A fool, and just a little cracked. Thy smile
May light on us, Britannia, healthy wench.