In Dissuasion + 

Dan Burns, you’d be a Senator, I hear, + 

And Senators are persons of much note. + 

I cannot choose but think it very queer + 

That you solicit for the place a vote. + 

Why, don’t you know you’ll have to ride the goat, + 

Be skyward from a shaken blanket hurled + 

And put in session on a heated chair + 

Till your immortal part is more than rare⁠— + 

Your foretaste of another, warmer world? + 

’Tis said that all ambitious louts who dare + 

Aspire to Senatorial fame receive it + 

In some such fashion, though I don’t believe it. + 

Still, you’ll suppose that this has all occurred. + 

If in that Upper House you e’er arise, + 

Trembly and hot, to speak your maiden word⁠— + 

Walls, desks, floor, ceiling to your failing eyes + 

Seeming to blend, and Senators like flies + 

To spin about in space! Rash man, forbear + 

To cherish your accurst ambition! Sir, + 

Your breeding and your character confer + 

Small right to breathe in that expanded air. + 

For toads to perch with eagles is to err. + 

Pray Heaven to send contentment with your station + 

And bar you from the hauls of legislation. + 

The toga, if you win it, scarce will serve + 

To cover up the stripes (where are the stars?) + 

Which to a fertile fancy seem to curve + 

Round you like shadows of the prison bars. + 

Embezzlement, I’m told, exists in Mars, + 

Where sometimes an official will “convey” + 

And in “the shadow of the jail” abide + 

Till it seems photographed upon his hide + 

And shapes his gait, as if he dragged alway + 

A ball-and-chain. Upon the Moon’s far side + 

Dwells such a man, who knows not (goes the story) + 

Which of the saints he is when out for glory. + 