Page:Prometheus Bound, and other poems.djvu/225

 And faces, held as steadfast as their swords, And cognisant of acts, not imageries. The key, O Tuscans, too well fits the wards! Ye asked for mimes; these bring you tragedies— For purple; these shall wear it as your lords. Ye played like children: die like innocents! Ye mimicked lightnings with a torch: the crack Of the actual bolt, your pastime, circumvents. Ye called up ghosts, believing they were slack To follow any voice from Gilboa's tents, Here's Samuel!—and, so, Grand-dukes come back!

And yet, they are no prophets though they come. That awful mantle they are drawing close, Shall be searched, one day, by the shafts of Doom, Through double folds now hoodwinking the brows. Resuscitated monarchs disentomb Grave-reptiles with them, in their new life-throes: Let such beware. Behold, the people waits, Like God. As He, in his serene of might, So they, in their endurance of long straits. Ye stamp no nation out, though day and night Ye tread them with that absolute heel which grates And grinds them flat from all attempted height. You kill worms sooner with a garden-spade Than you kill peoples: peoples will not die; The tail curls stronger when you lop the head; They writhe at every wound and multiply, And shudder into a heap of life that's made Thus vital from God's own vitality. 'Tis hard to shrivel back a day of God's