"Nay," you cry in bitter protest,
"Shall man have no perfect end,
No millennial culmination,
Toward which all the ages tend?
"Must all races prove decadent?
Shall not one produce in time
Perfect types of men and women
In a world devoid of crime?"
Scan the lurid past, and tell us
On what ground you base your hopes!
Does an endless line of failures
Warrant brighter horoscopes?
Hath not every race and nation
Sunk from grandeur to decay?
What shall save us, then, from ruin?
Are we better men than they?
"Great inventors", say you? Granted;
Such material gifts are ours;
Every age hath some distinction,
Every race its special powers.
But the progress is not lasting,
And the special powers decline;
Man's advance is never constant
In one grand, unbroken line.
Nor is ground, once lost, recovered;
Greece and Rome are not replaced!
All the sites of pagan learning
Still lie desolate and waste.
What know we,—except in physics—,
That the ancients did not know?
Are we wiser than the sages
Of two thousand years ago?
More devout than Hebrew prophets?
More upright than Antonine?
More accomplished than the Grecians,
Or than Buddha more divine?
And if such men could not hinder
Fate's resistless rise and fall,
How can we expect exemption
From the common lot of all?