Compete, and laureate laurels are lovely things,
Though crowing lyric lauders of kings and gods!
Beshrew the blatant bleating of sheep-voiced mimes!
True thunder shall strike dumb their chirping chimes.
If there be laureate laurels, or bays, or palms,
In these red, Radical, revelling, riotous times,
They should be the true bard's, though mid-age calms
His revolutionary fierce rolling rhymes,
Fulfilled with clamour and clangour and storm of—psalms
That great lyre's golden echoes rolled away!