To them as the light
Of an old, cold, frozen, and crystallized art.
But, ah, if you ask them what was true
When the words or the ways of their art were new,
If you ask them what were the traits it would show
Ere the form now frozen no longer could flow,
Or how it differ’d in nature from those
That spring in the present, when first it rose,—
All this their critic cares not to know.
He is nothing if not the dog of his day,