Where party more than principle was prized,
Where private gain was labeled "public good,"
And "patriotism" masked hypocrisy,
Science, when sordid, or subservient
To worldly ends, to aims material,
Stood pedestaled and robed in honors rare: 2530
While art fell fainting at the patron's door,
Or starved and froze in cheerless attic den.
For aye the flesh must first be comforted,
And e'en the body's luxuries abound,
Ere mind of man may clothe its nakedness,
Or hungering heart and spirit have their own.
Music, the drama, all art, still divine,
Though oft to ends ignoble basely bent,
In atmospheres miasmic, fever-fraught,
To folly pandering and to lechery; 2540
Or using gifts God-lent for good of all,
Gain's maw to glut, fame's lust to gratify.
Forgot the Giver, and adored the gift,
As in the pagan days of olden time.
And thou, where thou, O sage philosophy,
Heir to a hundred shadows of thy name!
Where thy spent waves on speculation's strand?
Still striving, finite for the infinite,
Man groping for the mystery of God,
A river that would fain engulf the sea! 2550
Religion dead, and poesy so deemed,
Because unwedded to a carnal age,
Unprostituted to its paltry aims,
Or hid beneath vast verbal rubbish heaps,
The dust and debris of the former fires.
Religion dead, but bigotry alive,
And ne'er more active upon earth than now,
When sect 'gainst sect in battle order stood,
And schisms and dissensions multiplied.
Some worshipt nothing, naming it a god; 2560
Some deemed the mortal dust a thing divine;
Religious, irreligious, bigotry,
Each counted victims by the hecatomb.
What wonder, when truth's meanings tortured were,
The living God dethroned, and in His stead,
A monster crouching on the Mercy Seat,
Whose mere caprice, naught else, did save or damn?
Wafting the blood-stained criminal to bliss,
If he but gasped, half hung, the holy Name?
Thrusting the spotless infant into hell, 2570
If un-elect, or unbaptized for sin!
To endless woe or weal forefating all.
What wonder justice, reason, stood aghast,
While faith, revolting, rushed to doubt's extreme?
Critics, high-soaring, sought to clip the wings
Of arrogance in all creeds save their own.
Half-fledged conclusion, findings premature,
Grounded on tale of rock or ruin old,
More credence had, more reverence, from men,
Than sacred lore of heaven-lit centuries. 2580
All miracle was myth, nor aught worth while,
Save, leaded down with learned theories,
It crawled, an earth-worm, wanting will to climb
Above the level of the commonplace.
Fanatics in the state as in the church,
Their prejudices palmed for principle,
Vain vagaries and dreams for doctrine sound;
And woe to him who lisped of liberty,
Or thought aloud one thought unthought before!
Freedom to think and breathe—God-granted boons, 2590
Alike, to savage, serf, and citizen—
Was all that freedom signified to some,
Who, as they doled a gift already given,
Boasted themselves magnanimous and wise.
Freedom to speak and act as conscience bade,
As God commanded, crushed or captive bound,
E'en where men vaunted most of liberty.
And peace was yet a dream unrealized,
For war still sowed and reaped his harvests red;
And Christian guns were mightiest and slew most. 2600
Nor yet stood toil 'gainst capital arrayed,
The starving masses 'gainst the Midases,
As erst arose, 'gainst moss-grown old regimes,
The trampled Terror[15], scrawling with fierce hand
On history's flaming scroll his red revenge,
With that blood-reeking pen, the guillotine;
Nor yet faced frowning mass contemning class[16],
Jeering, oblivious of the lurking doom,
The glooming clouds where groaned the gathering storm.
But murderous craft and oath-bound anarchy, 2610
With secret deeds of darkness, had begun
To sap the life of human government,
And plot against the safety of mankind;
While greeds and lusts and passions manifold,
Preying on frailty and on innocence,
Ran riot 'mid the fairest, brightest, best.