On the Platform

When Dr. Bill Bartlett stepped out of the hum
  Of Mammon’s distracting and wearisome strife
To stand and deliver a lecture on “Some
  Conditions of Intellectual Life,”
I cursed the offender who gave him the hall
To lecture on any conditions at all!

But he rose with a fire divine in his eye,
  Haranguing with endless abundance of breath,
Till I slept; and I dreamed of a gibbet reared high,
  And Dr. Bill Bartlett was dressing for death.
And I thought in my dream: “These conditions, no doubt,
Are bad for the life he was talking about.”

So I cried (pray remember this all was a dream):
  “Get off of the platform!⁠—it isn’t the kind!”
But he fell through the trap, with a jerk at the beam,
  And wiggled his toes to unburden his mind.
And, O, so bewitching the thoughts he advanced
That I clung to his ankles, attentive, entranced!