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 shore with a worship of shore. 
     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 passions:  mercurial they,
     Shifty their issue:  stir not that pit
     To the game our brutes best play.

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