It makes a mock of public opinion by caricature, and Parliament becomes the distorting mirror of the nation.

For him nor moves the loud world's random mock; Nor all Calamity's hugest waves confound, Who seems a promontory of rock, That, compass'd round with turbulent sound, In middle ocean meets the surging shock, Tempest-buffeted, citadel-crown'd.

O, dost thou mock my Griefs? by Heaven, he did.

How I dreaded it, how I sought to escape their mock and go home, poor fool!

And I saw that she would not cease from this perverseness, but made a dumb and naughty and hidden mock upon me, very dainty and constant, and scarce to be truly perceived, save by the inward sense.

And further in pursuit I would have gone, Nor had my swift career Even ended here, But for this mouth that opening in the rock, With horrid gape my vain attempt doth mock, And stops my further way.

If you can go a year on mouldy bacon And fight the scurvy off with bayo beans; If you can jump your socks and do your washing And smile the while you patch your threadbare jeans; If you can laugh when sordid hunger mocks you And smile while passing strangers eat your grub; If you can boost when everybody knocks you And know him wrong who holds you but a dub.

The lash of the master her deep sorrows mock, While the child of her bosom is sold on the block; Yet loud shrieked that mother, poor heart broken mother, In sorrow and woe.

Oh no, not a painted block Not the less a printed mock; A book, 'tis true; no whit the more A revealing out-going door.

This beauty is of the body alone, and what is that, but as Gregory Nazianzen telleth us, "a mock of time and sickness?"

Or doth God mock at me And blast my vision with some mad surmise? HERACLES.

But let not education mock, nor culture smile disdainfully at the short and simple pleasures of the poor.