 | The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith |  |
Oh, but Culture? and what all the culture we get?
Old furniture crammed into “Lodgings to let,”—
Nothing blending in harmony, graceful in beauty,
Or meet for a high life of courage and duty;
Only that which will pay: for our culture is meant
Not to make noble men, but a handsome per cent.
We touch on all topics, but nothing we know;
We open all questions, and still leave them so;
Never look to the end of them, dare not abide
By the issues we raise, but glance ever aside;
For there is not a lie, spite of God's high decree,
But has made its nest sure, on some branch of our tree,
And has some vested right to exist in the land,
And some who will have it the tree could not stand
If the sticks, straws, and feathers, that sheltered the wrong,
Were swept from the boughs they have cumbered so long.
Old furniture crammed into “Lodgings to let,”—
Nothing blending in harmony, graceful in beauty,
Or meet for a high life of courage and duty;
Only that which will pay: for our culture is meant
Not to make noble men, but a handsome per cent.
We touch on all topics, but nothing we know;
We open all questions, and still leave them so;
Never look to the end of them, dare not abide
By the issues we raise, but glance ever aside;
For there is not a lie, spite of God's high decree,
But has made its nest sure, on some branch of our tree,
And has some vested right to exist in the land,
And some who will have it the tree could not stand
If the sticks, straws, and feathers, that sheltered the wrong,
Were swept from the boughs they have cumbered so long.
| The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith | |