Courage, my poet!
The age of iron is not yet supreme,
For youth still throbs in the old veins of Mother Earth, wan and weary with sorrowful centuries.
Tho’ girdled our world by wires multitudinous transmitting the swift message
of electricity;
Tho’ the straight and curved lines of the railway run parallel along the immensity of continents for the advancement of culture;
Tho’ ships, steam-driven, even against storms, plough the waters of perilous oceans;—
Yet somewhere beyond the confines of our selfish civilization
There lies an Arcadia among the lone mountains, or perchance encircled by tideless seas,
Wherein dwell delicate beings who know not ambition or avarice,