THERE are who bid us chant this modern age, With all its shifting hopes and crowded cares, School-boards and land-laws, votes and state-affairs, And, one by one, the puny wars we wage; They charge us with our lyric flutes assuage The hunger that the lean-ribbed peasant bears, Or wreathe our laurel round the last gray hairs Of the old pauper in his workhouse-cage, -- Not wisely; for the round world spins so fast, Leaps in the air, staggers, and shoots, and halts, -- We know not what is false or what is true; But in the firm perspectives of the past We see the picture duly, and its faults Are softly moulded by a filmy blue. |