Classic Poem

Your sleek hypocrisy in white cravat
May cheat your grocer on his office stool,
Your oily accents, plausible and cool,
May please your widowed tenant and her cat;
And pompous pride, in broadcloth, fed and fat,
May seem an oracle in Sunday school—
And yet I know you both for knave and fool;
So spare your grinning and put on your hat.

Eternity itself were scarce enough
To learn a true man's quality, were he
Still but the humblest of a peasant stripe;
But the poor tinsel of your proper stuff
I mark, established artist though you be,
With one glance sideways as I fill my pipe.