‘Aye, ride above storm and censure, and lord it o’er time and distance,
In the maddening-sweet assurance of bliss like a rose-rain shed,
All for a wood-path venture, a gallant alert resistance,
And a stroke of the steel in circle about that exquisite head!
‘A task for your young drilled muscle!’
But the other, in soft derision
Answered him:
‘Oh, I had once some wild schemes under my hat:
Some thrill for this same snake-tussle, and the heirdom of life Elysian,
Long peace, long loving, long praises: but I’ve kindled and cooled on that!
‘Ten years have I been a ranger, I have hewn all dread to the centre;
I have learned to sift out values; my soul is at rest and free.
If that be your boon for danger, on a dull safe youth to enter,
Tho’ some may covet the guerdon, ’tis a poor enough thing to me.
‘I choose, might I come and return so, to a cause, a friend and a foeman
Staunch, to endure for the rest but as a moth, or a marigold!
Let the philosophers yearn so, the king bribe squire and yeoman!
Not for my lease immortal the serpent shall be cajoled.
‘To strike her down avenges her slain; but is evil ended?
The fashion dies; the function abides, and has fresher scope.
What is to be won? He cringes who would seize, were the choice extended,
For the risk elsewhere of living, here only survival’s hope!
‘I would keep my lot mine purely, cast in with men’s forever;
Their transient tempest sooner than these Sybaritic calms;
Tho’ against the cobra, surely, I would pit my soul’s endeavor,
Her crown and its lonely meaning I would scorn to take in alms.
‘Rather than ease unshaken, durance that sloth unhallows,
Once and for all, in honor, an end: what’s the forfeit crown
If the chance of my short term taken run plump on the axe or the gallows,
So one brother’s fetter be loosened, or one tyrant trampled down?
‘Why, see! this diadem’s pleasure a Turk might sigh to inherit,—
Heart-beats thrumming; a torpid and solitary cheer;
No call to arms, no measure of progress! Well, let him wear it
Unquestioned ... I spurned the bauble when I killed your snake last year.’