Will have to abdicate their primacy
Should such a nation sell them steel untaxed,
And such another take itself, on hire
For the natural sennight, somebody for lord
Unpatronized by me whose back was turned?
Or such another yet would fain build bridge,
Lay rail, drive tunnel, busy its poor self
With its appropriate fancy: so there's-
flash

Hohenstiel-Schwangau up in arms at once!
Genius has somewhat of the infantine:
But of the childish, not a touch nor taint
Except through self-will, which, being foolish-

ness,

Is certain, soon or late, of punishment.
Which Providence avert!- and that it may
Avert what both of us would so deserve,
No foolish dread o' the neighbor, I enjoin!
By consequence, no wicked war with him,
While I rule!

"Does that mean-no war at all When just the wickedness I here proscribe Comes, haply, from the neighbor? Does my speech

Precede the praying that you beat the sword
To ploughshare, and the spear to pruning-hook,
And sit down henceforth under your own vine
And fig-tree through the sleepy summer month,
Letting what hurly-burly please explode
On the other side the mountain-frontier? No,
Beloved! I foresee and I announce
Necessity of warfare in one case,

For one cause: one way, I bid broach the blood O' the world. For truth and right, and only right

And truth, right, truth, on the absolute scale

of God,

No pettiness of man's admeasurement,
In such case only, and for such one cause,
Fight your hearts out, whatever fate betide
Hands energetic to the uttermost!

Lie not! Endure no lie which needs your heart
And hand to push it out of mankind's path ·
No lie that lets the natural forces work
Too long ere lay it plain and pulverized –
Seeing man's life lasts only twenty years!
And such a lie, before both man and God,
Proving, at this time present, Austria's rule
O'er Italy, for Austria's sake the first,
Italy's next, and our sake last of all,
Come with me and deliver Italy!

Smite hip and thigh until the oppressor leave

What else noteworthy and commendable
I' the man's career? — that he was resolute-
No trepidation, much less treachery
On his part, should imperil from its poise
The ball o' the world, heaved up at such expense
Of pains so far, and ready to rebound,
Let but a finger maladroitly fall,
Under pretence of making fast and sure
The inch gained by late volubility,
And run itself back to the ancient rest
At foot o' the mountain. Thus he ruled, gave
proof

The world had gained a point, progressive so,
By choice, this time, as will and power con-

With the new order, recognize in me
Your right to constitute what king you will,
Cringe therefore crown in hand and bride on

arm,

To both of us: we triumph, I suppose!'
Is it the other sort of rank? - bright eye,
Soft smile, and so forth, all her queenly boast?
Undaunted the exordium-'I, the man
O' the people, with the people mate myself:
So stand, so fall. Kings, keep your crowns and
brides!

Our progeny (if Providence agree)

Shall live to tread the baubles underfoot
And bid the scarecrows consort with their kin.
For son, as for his sire, be the free wife
In the free state!'"

That is, Sagacity
Would prop up one more lie, the most of all
Pernicious fancy that the son and heir
Receives the genius from the sire, himself
Transmits as surely, - ask experience else!
Which answers, never was so plain a truth
} As that God drops his seed of heavenly flame
Just where he wills on earth sometimes
where man

Seems to tempt - such the accumulated store
Of faculties one spark to fire the heap;
Sometimes where, fireball-like, it falls upon
The naked unpreparedness of rock,
Burns, beaconing the nations through their
night.

Faculties, fuel for the flame? All helps
Come, ought to come, or come not, crossed by
chance,

From culture and transmission. What's your
want

I' the son and heir? Sympathy, aptitude,
Teachableness, the fuel for the flame?

You'll have them for your pains: but the
flame's self,

The novel thought of God shall light the world?
No, poet, though your offspring rhyme and
chime

I' the cradle, painter, no, for all your pet
Draws his first eye, beats Salvatore's boy,
And thrice no, statesman, should your progeny
Tie bib and tucker with no tape but red,
And make a foolscap-kite of protocols!
Critic and copyist and bureaucrat

To heart's content! The seed o' the apple-
tree

Brings forth another tree which bears a crab : 'Tis the great gardener grafts the excellence On wildings where he will.

"How plain I view, Across those misty years 'twixt me and Rome"

(Such the man's answer to Sagacity)

The little wayside temple, halfway down
To a mild river that makes oxen white
Miraculously, un-mouse-colors skin,

Or so the Roman country people dream!

I view that sweet small shrub-embedded shrine
On the declivity, was sacred once
To a transmuting Genius of the land,

Could touch and turn its dunnest natures bright,

- Since Italy means the Land of the Ox, we know.

Well, how was it the due succession fell
From priest to priest who ministered i' the cool
Calm fane o' the Clitumnian god? The sire
Brought forth a son and sacerdotal sprout,
Endowed instinctively with good and grace
To suit the gliding gentleness below
Did he? Tradition tells another tale.
Each priest obtained his predecessor's staff,
Robe, fillet and insignia, blamelessly,
By springing out of ambush, soon or late,
And slaying him: the initiative rite
Simply was murder, save that murder took,
I' the case, another and religious name.
So it was once, is now, shall ever be
With genius and its priesthood in this world:
The new power slays the old - but handsomely.
There he lies, not diminished by an inch
Of stature that he graced the altar with,
Though somebody of other bulk and build
Cries, What a goodly personage lies here
Reddening the water where the bulrush roots!
May I conduct the service in his place,
Decently and in order, as did he,
And, as he did not, keep a wary watch
When meditating 'neath yon willow shade!'
Find out your best man, sure the son of him
Will prove best man again, and, better still
Somehow than best, the grandson-prodigy!
You think the world would last another day
Did we so make us masters of the trick
Whereby the works go, we could pre-arrange
Their play and reach perfection when we please?
Depend on it, the change and the surprise
Are part o' the plan: 't is we wish steadiness;
Nature prefers a motion by unrest,
Advancement through this force which jostles
that.

And so, since much remains i' the world to

see,

Here's the world still, affording God the sight."

Thus did the man refute Sagacity,

Ever at this old whisper in his ear:

Here are you picked out, by a miracle,
And placed conspicuously enough, folks say
And you believe, by Providence outright
Taking a new way nor without success
To put the world upon its mettle: good!
But Fortune alternates with Providence;
Resource is soon exhausted. Never count
On such a happy hit occurring twice!
Try the old method next time!"

"Old enough," (At whisper in his ear, the laugh outbroke,) "And mode the most discredited of all, By just the men and women who make boast They are kings and queens thereby! Mere self-defence

Should teach them, on one chapter of the law
Must be no sort of trifling-chastity:

They stand or fall, as their progenitors
Were chaste or unchaste. Now, run eye

around

My crowned acquaintance, give each life its look

And no more, why, you 'd think each life was led

Purposely for example of what pains
Who leads it took to cure the prejudice,
And prove there's nothing so unprovable
As who is who, what son of what a sire,
And-inferentially - how faint the chance
That the next generation needs to fear
Another fool of the selfsame type as he
Happily regnant now by right divine
And luck o' the pillow! No: select your lord
By the direct employment of your brains
As best you may,bad as the blunder prove,
A far worse evil stank beneath the sun
When some legitimate blockhead managed so
Matters that high time was to interfere,
Though interference came from hell itself
And not the blind mad miserable mob
Happily ruled so long by pillow-luck

And divine right, by lies in short, not truth.
And meanwhile use the allotted minute. . .'

One, - yes, five the pendule

Two, three, four, five
warns!
Eh? Why, this wild work wanders past all
bound

And bearing! Exile, Leicester Square, the life
I' the old gay miserable time, rehearsed,
Tried on again like cast clothes, still to serve
At a pinch, perhaps? "Who's who?"

aptly asked,

was

Since certainly I am not I! since when?
Where is the bud-mouthed arbitress? A nod
Out-Homering Homer! Stay there flits the

clue

And all the interlocutors alike
Subordinating, - as decorum bids,

Oh, never fear! but still decisively,

Claims from without that take too high a tone, -("God wills this, man wants that, the dignity

Prescribed a prince would wish the other thing")

Putting them back to insignificance
Beside one intimatest fact myself
Am first to be considered, since I live
Twenty years longer and then end, perhaps !
But, where one ceases to soliloquize,
Somehow the motives, that did well enough

I' the darkness, when you bring them inte light

Are found, like those famed cave-fish, to lack eye

And organ for the upper magnitudes.

The other common creatures, of less fine
Existence, that acknowledge earth and heaven,
Have it their own way in the argument.
Yes, forced to speak, one stoops to say-one's
aim

Was what it peradventure should have been:

To renovate a people, mend or end

That bane come of a blessing meant the world

Inordinate culture of the sense made quick
By soul, the lust o' the flesh, lust of the eye.
And pride of life, and, consequent on these,
The worship of that prince o' the power o' the
air

Who paints the cloud and fills the emptiness
And bids his votaries, famishing for truth,
Feed on a lie.

Alack, one lies one's self Even in the stating that one's end was truth, Truth only, if one states as much in words! Give me the inner chamber of the soul For obvious easy argument! 't is there One pits the silent truth against a lie — Truth which breaks shell a careless simple bird, Nor wants a gorget nor a beak filed fine, Steel spurs and the whole armory o' the tongue, To equalize the odds. But, do your best, Words have to come: and somehow words deflect

As the best cannon ever rifled will.

Thus watch one who, in the world,
Both lives and likes life's way,
Nor wishes the wings unfurled
That sleep in the worm, they say ?

But sometimes when the weather

Is blue, and warm waves tempt
To free one's self of tether,
And try a life exempt

From worldly noise and dust,

In the sphere which overbrims With passion and thought, why, just Unable to fly, one swims!

By passion and thought upborne,

One smiles to one's self- "They fare Scarce better, they need not scorn Our sea, who live in the air!"

lure.