Drums and battle-cries Go out in music of the morning-star-- And soon we shall have thinkers in the place Of fighters, each found able as a man To strike electric influence through a race, Unstayed by city-wall and barbican. The poet shall look grander in the face Than even of old (when he of Greece began To sing "that Achillean wrath which slew So many heroes")--seeing he shall treat The deeds of souls heroic toward the true, The oracles of life, previsions sweet And awful like divine swans gliding through White arms of Ledas, which will leave the heat Of their escaping godship to endue The human medium with a heavenly flush. Meanwhile, in this same Italy we want Not popular passion, to arise and crush, But popular conscience, which may covenant For what it knows. Concede without a blush, To grant the "civic guard" is not to grant The civic spirit, living and awake: Those lappets on your shoulders, citizens, Your eyes strain after sideways till they ache (While still, in admirations and amens, The crowd comes up on festa-days to take The great sight in)--are not intelligence, Not courage even--alas, if not the sign Of something very noble, they are nought; For every day ye dress your sallow kine With fringes down their cheeks, though unbesought They loll their heavy heads and drag the wine And bear the wooden yoke as they were taught The first day. What ye want is light--indeed Not sunlight--(ye may well look up surprised To those unfathomable heavens that feed Your purple hills)--but God's light organized In some high soul, crowned capable to lead The conscious people, conscious and advised,-- For if we lift a people like mere clay, It falls the same. We want thee, O unfound And sovran teacher! if thy beard be grey Or black, we bid thee rise up from the ground And speak the word God giveth thee to say, Inspiring into all this people round, Instead of passion, thought, which pioneers All generous passion, purifies from sin, And strikes the hour for. Rise up, teacher! here's A crowd to make a nation!--best begin By making each a man, till all be peers Of earth's true patriots and pure martyrs in Knowing and daring. Best unbar the doors Which Peter's heirs keep locked so overclose They only let the mice across the floors, While every churchman dangles, as he goes, The great key at his girdle, and abhors In Christ's name, meekly. Open wide the house, Concede the entrance with Christ's liberal mind, And set the tables with His wine and bread. What! "commune in both kinds?" In every kind-- Wine, wafer, love, hope, truth, unlimited, Nothing kept back. For when a man is blind To starlight, will he see the rose is red? A bondsman shivering at a Jesuit's foot-- "Vae! mea culpa!"--is not like to stand