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: These and, majestic in a borrowed shape, The major and the minor potentate, Creative of their various ape;— The tiptoe mortals triumphing to write Upon a perishable page An inch above their fellows’ height;— The criers of foregone wisdom, who impose Its slough on live conditions, much for the greed Of our first hungry figure wide agape;— Call up thy hounds of laughter to their run. These, that would have men still of men be foes, Eternal fox to prowl and pike to feed; Would keep our life the whirly pool Of turbid stuff dishonouring History; The herd the drover’s herd, the fool the fool, Ourself our slavish self’s infernal sun: These are the children of the heart untaught By thy quick founts to beat abroad, by thee Untamed to tone its passions under thought, The rich humaneness reading in thy fun. Of them a world of coltish heels for school We have; a world with driving wrecks bestrewn.