lucid heave
     The under tides of this hot heart seen through. 
     Beneficently wilt thou clip
     All oversteppings of the plumed,
     The puffed, and bid the masker strip,
     And into the crowned windbag thrust,
     Tearing the mortal from the vital thing,
     A lightning o’er the half-illumed,
     Who to base brute-dominion cleave,
     Yet mark effects, and shun the flash,
     Till their drowsed wits a beam conceive,
     To spy a wound without a gash,
     The magic in a turn of wrist,
     And how are wedded heart and head regaled
     When Wit o’er Folly blows the mort,
     And their high note of union spreads
     Wide from the timely word with conquest charged;
     Victorious laughter, of no loud report,
     If heard; derision as divinely veiled
     As terrible Immortals in rose-mist,
     Given to the vision of arrested men: 
     Whereat they feel within them weave
     Community its closer threads,
     And are to our fraternal state enlarged;
     Like warm fresh blood is their enlivened ken: 
     They learn that thou art not of alien sort,
     Speaking the tongue by vipers hissed,
     Or of the frosty heights unsealed,
     Or of the vain who simple speech distort,
     Or of the vapours pointing on to nought
     Along cold skies; though sharp and high thy pitch;
     As when sole homeward the belated treads,
     And hears aloft a clamour wailed,
     That once had seemed the broomstick witch
     Horridly violating cloud for drought: 
     He, from the rub of minds dispersing fears,
     Hears migrants marshalling their midnight train;
     Homeliest order in black sky appears,
     Not less than in the lighted village steads. 
     So do those half-illumed wax clear to share
     A cry that is our common voice; the note
     Of fellowship upon a loftier plane,
     Above embattled castle-wall and moat;
     And toning drops as from pure heaven it sheds. 
     So thou for washing a phantasmal air,
     For thy sweet singing keynote of the wise,
     Laughter—­the joy of Reason seeing fade
     Obstruction into Earth’s renewing beds,
     Beneath the stroke of her good servant’s blade —
     Thenceforth art as their earth-star hailed;
     Gain of the years, conjunction’s prize. 
     The greater heart in thy appeal to heads
     They see, thou Captain of our civil Fort! 
     By more elusive savages assailed
     On each ascending stage; untired
     Both inner foe and outer to cut short,
     And blow to chaff pretenders void of grist: 
     Showing old tiger’s claws, old crocodile’s
     Yard-grin of eager grinders, slim to sight,
     Like forms in running water, oft when smiles,
     When pearly tears, when fluent lips delight: 
     But never with the slayer’s malice fired: