(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?

And ask of thyself: This furious Yea
Of a speech I thump to repeat,

In the cause I would have prevail,
For seed of a nourishing wheat,

IS IT ACCEPTED OF SONG?
Does it sound to the mind through the ear,

Right sober, pure sane? has it disciplined feet?
Thou wilt find it a test severe;

Unerring whatever the theme.
Rings it for Reason a melody clear,

We have bidden old Chaos retreat;
We have called on Creation to hear;

All forces that make us are one full stream.
Simple islander! thus may the spirit in verse,

Showing its practical value and weight,
Pipe to thee clear from the Empty Purse,

Lead thee aloft to that high estate. -
The test is conclusive, I deem:

It embraces or mortally bites.
We have then the key-note for debate:

A Senate that sits on the heights
Over discords, to shape and amend.

And no singer is needed to serve
The musical God, my friend.

Needs only his law on a sensible nerve:
A law that to Measure invites,

Forbidding the passions contend.
Is it accepted of Song?

And if then the blunt answer be Nay,
Dislink thee sharp from the ramping horde,

Slaves of the Goddess of hoar-old sway,
The Queen of delirious rites,

Queen of those issueless mobs, that rend
For frenzy the strings of a fruitful accord,

Pursuing insensate, seething in throng,
Their wild idea to its ashen end.

Off to their Phrygia, shriek and gong,
Shorn from their fellows, behold them wend!

But thou, should the answer ring Ay,
Hast warrant of seed for thy word:

The musical God is nigh
To inspirit and temper, tune it, and steer

Through the shoals: is it worthy of Song,
There are souls all woman to hear,

Woman to bear and renew.
For he is the Master of Measure, and weighs,

Broad as the arms of his blue,
Fine as the web of his rays,

Justice, whose voice is a melody clear,
The one sure life for the numbered long,

From him are the brutal and vain,
The vile, the excessive, out-thrust:

He points to the God on the upmost throne:
He is the saver of grain,

The sifter of spirit from dust.
He, Harmony, tells how to Measure pertain

The virilities: Measure alone
Has votaries rich in the male:

Fathers embracing no cloud,
Sowing no harvestless main:

Alike by the flesh and the spirit endowed
To create, to perpetuate; woo, win, wed;

Send progeny streaming, have earth for their own,
Over-run the insensates, disperse with a puff

Simulacra, though solid they sail,
And seem such imperial stuff:

Yes, the living divide off the dead.
Then thou with thy furies outgrown,

Not as Cybele's beast will thy head lash tail
So praeter-determinedly thermonous,

Nor thy cause be an Attis far fled.
Thou under stress of the strife

Shalt hear for sustainment supreme
The cry of the conscience of Life:

KEEP THE YOUNG GENERATIONS IN HAIL,
AND BEQUEATH THEM NO TUMBLED HOUSE!

There hast thou the sacred theme,
Therein the inveterate spur,

Of the Innermost. See her one blink
In vision past eyeballs. Not thee

She cares for, but us. Follow her.
Follow her, and thou wilt not sink.

With thy soul the Life espouse:
This Life of the visible, audible, ring

With thy love tight about; and no death will be;
The name be an empty thing,

And woe a forgotten old trick:
And battle will come as a challenge to drink;

As a warrior's wound each transient sting.
She leads to the Uppermost link by link;

Exacts but vision, desires not vows.
Above us the singular number to see;

The plural warm round us; ourself in the thick,
A dot or a stop: that is our task;

Her lesson in figured arithmetic,
For the letters of Life behind its mask;

Her flower-like look under fearful brows.
As for thy special case, O my friend, one must think

Massilia's victim, who held the carouse
For the length of a carnival year,

Knew worse: but the wretch had his opening choice.
For thee, by our law, no alternatives were:

Thy fall was assured ere thou camest to a voice.
He cancelled the ravaging Plague,

With the roll of his fat off the cliff.
Do thou with thy lean as the weapon of ink,

Though they call thee an angler who fishes the vague
And catches the not too pink,

Attack one as murderous, knowing thy cause
Is the cause of community. Iterate,