Volume Iii Part 6 (1/2)

Precedents icily written on high Challenge the Tentatives hot to rebel.

Our Mother, who speeds her bloomful quick For the march, reads which the impediment well.

She smiles when of sapience is their boast.

O loose of the tug between blood run dry And blood running flame may our offspring run!

May brain democratic be king of the host!

Less then shall the volumes of History tell Of the stop in progression, the slip in relapse, That counts us a sand-slack inch hard won Beneath an oppressive inc.u.mbent perhaps.

Let the senile lords in a parchment sky, And the generous turbulents drunken of morn, Their battle of instincts put by, A moment examine this field: On a Roman street cast thoughtful eye, Along to the mounts from the bog-forest weald.

It merits a glance at our history's maps, To see across Britain's old s.h.a.ggy unshorn, Through the Parties in strife internecine, foot The ruler's close-reckoned direct to the mark.

From the head ran the vanquisher's orderly route, In the stride of his forts through the tangle and dark.

From the head runs the paved firm way for advance, And we shoulder, we wrangle! The light on us shed Shows dense beetle blackness in swarm, lurid Chance, The G.o.ddess of gamblers, above. From the head, Then when it worked for the birth of a star Fraternal with heaven's in beauty and ray, Sprang the Acropolis. Ask what crown Comes of our tides of the blood at war, For men to bequeath generations down!

And ask what thou wast when the Purse was brimmed: What high-bounding ball for the G.o.ds at play: A Conservative youth! who the cream-bowl skimmed, Desiring affairs to be left as they are.

So, thou takest Youth's natural place in the fray, As a Tentative, combating Peace, Our lullaby word for decay. - There will come an immediate decree In thy mind for the opposite party's decease, If he bends not an instant knee.

Expunge it: extinguis.h.i.+ng counts poor gain.

And accept a mild word of police:- Be mannerly, measured; refrain From the puffings of him of the bagpipe cheeks.

Our political, even as the merchant main, A temperate gale requires For the s.h.i.+p that haven seeks; Neither G.o.d of the winds nor his bellowsy squires.

Then observe the antagonist, con His reasons for rocking the lullaby word.

You stand on a different stage of the stairs.

He fought certain battles, yon senile lord.

In the strength of thee, feel his bequest to his heirs.

We are now on his inches of ground hard won, For a perch to a flight o'er his resting fence.

Does it knock too hard at thy head if I say, That Time is both father and son?

Tough lesson, when senses are floods over sense! - Discern the paternal of Now As the Then of thy present tense.

You may pull as you will either way, You can never be other than one.

So, be filial. Giants to slay Demand knowing eyes in their Jack.

There are those whom we push from the path with respect.

Bow to that elder, though seeing him bow To the backward as well, for a thunderous back Upon thee. In his day he was not all wrong.

Unto some foundered zenith he strove, and was wrecked.

He scrambled to sh.o.r.e with a wors.h.i.+p of sh.o.r.e.

The Future he sees as the slippery murk; The Past as his doctrinal library lore.

He stands now the rock to the wave's wild wash.

Yet thy lumpish antagonist once did work Heroical, one of our strong.

His gold to retain and his dross reject, Engage him, but humour, not aiming to quash.

Detest the dead squat of the Turk, And suffice it to move him along.

Drink of faith in the brains a full draught Before the oration: beware Lest rhetoric moonily waft Whither horrid activities snare.

Rhetoric, juice for the mob Despising more luminous grape, Oft at its fount has it laughed In the cataracts rolling for rape Of a Reason left single to sob!

'Tis known how the permanent never is writ In blood of the pa.s.sions: mercurial they, s.h.i.+fty their issue: stir not that pit To the game our brutes best play.

But with rhetoric loose, can we check man's brute?

a.s.semblies of men on their legs invoke Excitement for wholesome diversion: there shoot Electrical sparks between their dry thatch And thy waved torch, more to kindle than light.

'Tis instant between you: the trick of a catch (To match a Batrachian croak) Will thump them a frenzy or fun in their veins.

Then may it be rather the well-worn joke Thou repeatest, to stop conflagration, and write Penance for rhetoric. Strange will it seem, When thou readest that form of thy homage to brains!

For the secret why demagogues fail, Though they carry hot mobs to the red extreme, And knock out or knock in the nail (We will rank them as flatly sincere, Devoutly detesting a wrong, Engines o'ercharged with our human steam), Question thee, seething amid the throng.

And ask, whether Wisdom is born of blood-heat; Or of other than Wisdom comes victory here; - Aught more than the banquet and roundelay, That is closed with a terrible terminal wail, A retributive black ding-dong?