Page:Songs, Legends, and Ballads.djvu/34

But the cant of the ultra-suasion school
Unsinews the hand and thigh,
And preaches the creed of the weak to rule,
And the strong to struggle and die.
Our schools are spurred to the fatal race,
As if health were the nation's sin.
Till the head grows large, and the vampire face
Is gorged on the limbs so thin.
Our women have entered the abstract fields.
And avaunt with the child and home:
While the rind of science a pleasure yields
Shall they care for the lives to come?
And they ape the manners of manly times
In their sterile and worthless life.
Till the man of the future augments his crimes
With a raid for a Sabine wife.

Ho, white-maned waves of the Western Sea,
That ride and roll to the strand!
Hr, strong-winged birds, never blown a-lee
By the gales that sweep toward land!