University of Virginia Library

In this fair land, whose fields lie robed in bloom,
A living poem bound in blue and gold,
With azure flowers like little flecks of sky
Fallen, tangled in the dew-drops, to the grass,
And orange ones—as if the wealth below
Had blossomed up in beaten flakes of gold;
Where all the baser elements of earth,
Aspiring up through root, and stalk, and leaf,
Stand stretching delicate petal-wings toward heaven,
Poised on their slender feet for flying; here
Nature, like amorous Cleopatra, plots
To hold her Cæsar, brimming every sense
With perfume, song, and gorgeous coloring,
Throws softly wooing winds about his neck,
With sparkling air (as tho' not pearls alone,
But diamonds were dissolved in it), still fires
His brain to seek new dalliance, fresh delight,
Forgetful of his throne beyond the Sea.
Content with the golden Present, now, they say,
We must pore in the past no longer; our old books,
And antique, moss-grown system must give way
To the new patent methods for the mind;
New patent lives to lead, with no more dreams
And superstitions, only practical work.
A callow-winged philosophy breaks shell
And cackles prematurely loud that we
Are mummied, gone behind the times; no more
Dead languages, nor cloister-life—the lore
That will not take the harness for their use,
To weave, or grind, or burrow-out the mine,
Smells mouldy to their noses—Sophomores,
And parvenus of the intellectual world!
Who would brush down from heaven the olden stars,
To set new, self-adjusting spangles there,
Would mow the everlasting mountains off,
And build up straight, right-angled ones instead.