We find your soft Utopias as white <br />As new-cut bread, and dull as life in cells, <br />O, scribes who dare forget how wild we are <br />How human breasts adore alarum bells. <br />You house us in a hive of prigs and saints <br />Communal, frugal, clean and chaste by law. <br />I’d rather brood in bloody Elsinore <br />Or be Lear’s fool, straw-crowned amid the straw. <br />Promise us all our share in Agincourt <br />Say that our clerks shall venture scorns and death, <br />That future ant-hills will not be too good <br />For Henry Fifth, or Hotspur, or Macbeth. <br />Promise that through to-morrow’s spirit-war <br />Man’s deathless soul will hack and hew its way, <br />Each flaunting Caesar climbing to his fate <br />Scorning the utmost steps of yesterday. <br />Never a shallow jester any more! <br />Let not Jack Falstaff spill the ale in vain. <br />Let Touchstone set the fashions for the wise <br />And Ariel wreak his fancies through the rain.<br /><br />Vachel Lindsay<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-voice-of-the-man-impatient-with-visions-and-utopias/
