With apologies to Wordsworth, a well-known conservative emailed the following sonnet to The Scrapbook “Expressing Concern with Republicans’ Tendency to Revert to a Green-Eyeshade Obsession with Trivial Spending Cuts.” Here’s hoping this will stiffen congressional spines for going after larger game, like entitlement reform.

The budget’s too much with you; late and soon, Obsessed with spending, you lay waste your powers: Little we see in ideas that are ours; You risk squandering your broad mandate, a sordid boon! Defense cuts that bare our bosom to the moon; The bold reforms that should be pushed at all hours, But are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; In this, it worries me, you may be out of tune; This moves you not.—Great God! I’d rather be A supply-sider suckled in a creed outworn; Then might I, sipping my fresh-brewed tea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Jack Kemp rising from the sea; Or hear old Reagan blow his wreathed horn.