Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/198

192 Drums and battle cries Go out in music of the morning star— And soon we shall have thinkers in the place Of fighters; each found able as a man To strike electric influence through a race, Unstayed by city-wall and barbican. The poet shall look grander in the face Than ever he looked of old, when he began To sing that "Achillean wrath which slew So many heroes,"—seeing he shall treat The deeds of souls heroic toward the true— The oracles of life—previsions sweet And awful, like divine swans gliding through White arms of Ledas, which will leave the heat Of their escaping godship to endue The human medium with a heavenly flush. Meanwhile, in this same Italy we want Not popular passion, to arise and crush. But popular conscience, which may covenant For what it knows. Concede without a blush— To grant the "civic guard" is not to grant The civic spirit, living and awake. Those lappets on your shoulders, citizens, Your eyes strain after sideways till they ache, While still, in admirations and amens, The crowd comes up on festa-days, to take The great sight in—are not intelligence, Not courage even—alas, if not the sign Of something very noble, they are nought; For every day ye dress your sallow kine With fringes down their cheeks, though unbesought They loll their heavy heads and drag the wine,