Phantasmagoria and Other Poems

BLOW, blow your trumpets till they crack,Ye little men of little souls!And bid them huddle at your back –Gold-sucking leeches, shoals on shoals!Fill all the air with hungry wails –"Reward us, ere we think or write!Without your Gold mere Knowledge failsTo sate the swinish appetite!"And, where great Plato paced serene,

Or Newton paused with wistful eye,Rush to the chace with hoofs uncleanAnd Babel-clamour of the styBe yours the pay: be theirs the praise:We will not rob them of their due,Nor vex the ghosts of other daysBy naming them along with you.They sought and found undying fame:They toiled not for reward nor thanks:Their cheeks are hot with honest shame

For you, the modern mountebanks!Who preach of Justice – plead with tearsThat Love and Mercy should abound –While marking with complacent earsThe moaning of some tortured hound:Who prate of Wisdom – nay, forbear,Lest Wisdom turn on you in wrath,Trampling, with heel that will not spare,The vermin that beset her path!

Go, throng each other's drawing-rooms,Ye idols of a petty clique:Strut your brief hour in borrowed plumes,And make your penny-trumpets squeak.Deck your dull talk with pilfered shredsOf learning from a nobler time,And oil each other's little headsWith mutual Flattery's golden slime:And when the topmost height ye gain,And stand in Glory's ether clear,

And grasp the prize of all your pain –So many hundred pounds a year –Then let Fame's banner be unfurled!Sing Paeans for a victory won!Ye tapers, that would light the world,And cast a shadow on the Sun –Who still shall pour His rays sublime,One crystal flood, from East to West,When YE have burned your little timeAnd feebly flickered into rest!