edge, retort
     Or hold the deadlier reserve,
     And through thy victim’s weapon sting: 
     Thine is the service, thine the sport
     This shifty heart of ours to hunt
     Across its webs and round the many a ring
     Where fox it is, or snake, or mingled seeds
     Occasion heats to shape, or the poor smoke
     Struck from a puff-ball, or the troughster’s grunt; —
     Once lion of our desert’s trodden weeds;
     And but for thy straight finger at the yoke,
     Again to be the lordly paw,
     Naming his appetites his needs,
     Behind a decorative cloak: 
     Thou, of the highest, the unwritten Law
     We read upon that building’s architrave
     In the mind’s firmament, by men upraised
     With sweat of blood when they had quitted cave
     For fellowship, and rearward looked amazed,
     Where the prime motive gapes a lurid jaw,
     Thou, soul of wakened heads, art armed to warn,
     Restrain, lest we backslide on whence we sprang,
     Scarce better than our dwarf beginning shoot,
     Of every gathered pearl and blossom shorn;
     Through thee, in novel wiles to win disguise,
     Seen are the pits of the disruptor, seen
     His rebel agitation at our root: 
     Thou hast him out of hawking eyes;
     Nor ever morning of the clang
     Young Echo sped on hill from horn
     In forest blown when scent was keen
     Off earthy dews besprinkling blades
     Of covert grass more merrily rang
     The yelp of chase down alleys green,
     Forth of the headlong-pouring glades,
     Over the dappled fallows wild away,
     Than thy fine unaccented scorn
     At sight of man’s old secret brute,
     Devout for pasture on his prey,
     Advancing, yawning to devour;
     With step of deer, with voice of flute,
     Haply with visage of the lily flower.

     Let the cock crow and ruddy morn
     His handmaiden appear!  Youth claims his hour. 
     The generously ludicrous
     Espouses it.  But see we sons of day,
     Off whom Life leans for guidance in our fight,
     Accept the throb for lord of us;
     For lord, for the main central light
     That gives direction, not the eclipse;
     Or dost thou look where niggard Age,
     Demanding reverence for wrinkles, whips
     A tumbled top to grind a wolf’s worn tooth; —
     Hoar despot on our final stage,
     In dotage of a stunted Youth; —
     Or it may be some venerable sage,
     Not having thee awake in him, compact
     Of wisdom else, the breast’s old tempter trips;
     Or see we ceremonial state,
     Robing the gilded beast, exact
     Abjection, while the crackskull name of Fate
     Is used to stamp and hallow printed fact;
     A cruel corner lengthens up thy lips;
     These are thy game wherever men engage: