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A PATRICIAN POET
I have lived too long. The new age is come with its sin and its shame,
Names with the guerdon of truth and truth becomes but a name.
Kings discrowned by the rabble and altars defiled by the schools,
And the glory of ancient wisdom a mock for the tongues of fools—
Names with the guerdon of truth and truth becomes but a name.
Kings discrowned by the rabble and altars defiled by the schools,
And the glory of ancient wisdom a mock for the tongues of fools—
Canaille scoffing at Honor, Chivalry, Loyalty, Faith,—
They call the Ideal a phantom, and each thought of their hearts is a wraith;
Speak with a smile of dreams and dream that the world is free,
Deny the Gospel and seek a Christ in the Rule of Three.
They call the Ideal a phantom, and each thought of their hearts is a wraith;
Speak with a smile of dreams and dream that the world is free,
Deny the Gospel and seek a Christ in the Rule of Three.
81
Oh, he's a wise, broad thinker, your man of the period;
Just hear him scoff at the creeds—he has even his doubts about God;
Pshaw, there is nothing real but railways and machines;
Poetry? Loyalty? Faith? Weak props for a tower that leans!
Just hear him scoff at the creeds—he has even his doubts about God;
Pshaw, there is nothing real but railways and machines;
Poetry? Loyalty? Faith? Weak props for a tower that leans!
No need of props to support the new marvelous column he rears
Built on the shifting sands, he thinks 'twill outlast the years.
Oh, how he hates intolerance!—see his eye flash at the word;
Wouldn't he make the intolerant howl, if he bore the sword!
Built on the shifting sands, he thinks 'twill outlast the years.
Oh, how he hates intolerance!—see his eye flash at the word;
Wouldn't he make the intolerant howl, if he bore the sword!
Bah, your liberal's ever worst bigot, your broad man the narrowest ass,
Your Free Thought the true captive beating 'gainst barriers it never can pass.
Call me slave of old thoughts and old systems, sunk deep in the Old World mire!
So the world thinks, that thinks you the freeman—but the world is a pitiful liar.
Your Free Thought the true captive beating 'gainst barriers it never can pass.
Call me slave of old thoughts and old systems, sunk deep in the Old World mire!
So the world thinks, that thinks you the freeman—but the world is a pitiful liar.
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That's where the evil begins—in the theories that beguile
The idle hour at the club, where the skeptical simper and smile,
Arraying the stark unbelief in the finery of culture and Art.
Fudge! the gentles but play at Free Thought, it's the mob that take it to heart.
The idle hour at the club, where the skeptical simper and smile,
Arraying the stark unbelief in the finery of culture and Art.
Fudge! the gentles but play at Free Thought, it's the mob that take it to heart.
Be sure, where a gentleman soils his patent-leathers, it's luck
If the clown that follows him doesn't plunge heels over head in the muck.
Atheism in the palace smiles in its silken coat,
But atheism in the hovel curses and cuts your throat.
If the clown that follows him doesn't plunge heels over head in the muck.
Atheism in the palace smiles in its silken coat,
But atheism in the hovel curses and cuts your throat.
Sneer at the ancients, fools,—but you'll never be half as great.
Oh, never a visionary of the ages you laugh at and hate,
Was half so deluded a dunce as your rattlepate modern fanatics,—
Do you think the millennium will come when your stable boys study quadratics?
Oh, never a visionary of the ages you laugh at and hate,
Was half so deluded a dunce as your rattlepate modern fanatics,—
Do you think the millennium will come when your stable boys study quadratics?
83
Educate, educate, educate! 'Tis the catchword of the age.
One would fancy you thought even anarchy might grow quiet and sage,—
A little toy Heaven—if learned; or deemed, if the truth you would speak,
Democracies just, as soon as the democrats all know Greek.
One would fancy you thought even anarchy might grow quiet and sage,—
A little toy Heaven—if learned; or deemed, if the truth you would speak,
Democracies just, as soon as the democrats all know Greek.
Teach them and then they will rise, you say. Call it so; but to what?
From the lowly unlettered content of the old-fashloned laborer's lot
To the whirl and the bustle and greed of the life of the shop and the street—
To the filth of political intrigue, the statecraft of trickster and cheat—
From the lowly unlettered content of the old-fashloned laborer's lot
To the whirl and the bustle and greed of the life of the shop and the street—
To the filth of political intrigue, the statecraft of trickster and cheat—
To the knowledge of murderous means that are safer than pistol and knife—
To the discord that springs from a false note struck in the music of life.
They who lay moored in the calm, by new blasts to the tempest are wrenched.
What use knowing logarithms, if the light of the stars be quenched?
To the discord that springs from a false note struck in the music of life.
They who lay moored in the calm, by new blasts to the tempest are wrenched.
What use knowing logarithms, if the light of the stars be quenched?
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What can you teach, after all? Mere scraps from the Public School,
To craze with conceit of wisdom the empty pate of a fool.
Teach them the A B C of the learning the ages have stored,—
Straightway they deem themselves able to govern as well as my lord.
To craze with conceit of wisdom the empty pate of a fool.
Teach them the A B C of the learning the ages have stored,—
Straightway they deem themselves able to govern as well as my lord.
Even God's providence useless—a child's help—they need it no more,
Just because they have mastered the nursery-rhymes of lore.
Public School, forsooth! Panacea for all world's wo!
Kingdom come when the schoolhouse equals the high and the low!
Just because they have mastered the nursery-rhymes of lore.
Public School, forsooth! Panacea for all world's wo!
Kingdom come when the schoolhouse equals the high and the low!
Mix them together, the children, so caste dies, democracy lives;
But what will you breed but mongrels, cross between gentles and thieves?
Crowd Lower and Higher together in a mad democratic uproar,—
The Lower will pull down the Higher, not the Higher ennoble the Lower,
But what will you breed but mongrels, cross between gentles and thieves?
Crowd Lower and Higher together in a mad democratic uproar,—
The Lower will pull down the Higher, not the Higher ennoble the Lower,
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And into the pure white souls of your high-born children shall thrust,
To creep and coil and commingle, the loathsome serpents of lust—
Ay, lust of nameless and shameless kinds—O brothers! O men!
Will ye pull down God's wrath on New Sodom? Will ye build up a New Babel again?
To creep and coil and commingle, the loathsome serpents of lust—
Ay, lust of nameless and shameless kinds—O brothers! O men!
Will ye pull down God's wrath on New Sodom? Will ye build up a New Babel again?
Oh, many an untaught peasant, far from the school and the mart,
Wise in his simple way with the silly lore of the heart,
Is far higher and nobler and better and wiser—worth more for life's work,
Than your gutter-sprung smatter-taught bullies that misrule and plunder New York.
Wise in his simple way with the silly lore of the heart,
Is far higher and nobler and better and wiser—worth more for life's work,
Than your gutter-sprung smatter-taught bullies that misrule and plunder New York.
Behind the times? It's an easy cry. Be it so, if you will;
Better behind the times, if the times are going down hill.
Did you live in the days of Nero, had you cared to keep up with the times?
Not I, tho Nero himself had sneered at my retrograde rhymes.
Better behind the times, if the times are going down hill.
Did you live in the days of Nero, had you cared to keep up with the times?
Not I, tho Nero himself had sneered at my retrograde rhymes.
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The world will awake some day; I know it, for God is great.
For some good, though I guess it dimly, His people suffer and wait.
It will all come right in the end;—God forbid that I doubt!—but I—
I am old; I shall never see it. It is time for me to die.
For some good, though I guess it dimly, His people suffer and wait.
It will all come right in the end;—God forbid that I doubt!—but I—
I am old; I shall never see it. It is time for me to die.
Washington, D. C.
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