| O DAYS endeared to every Muse, | |
| When nobody had any Views, | |
| Nor, while the cloudscape of his mind | |
| By every breeze was new designed, | |
| Insisted all the world should see | 5 |
| Camels or whales where none there be! | |
| O happy days, when men received | |
| From sire to son what all believed, | |
| And left the other world in bliss, | |
| Too busy with bedevilling this! | 10 |
| Beset by doubts of every breed | |
| In the last bastion of my creed, | |
| With shot and shell for Sabbath-chime, | |
| I watch the storming-party climb, | |
| Panting (their prey in easy reach), | 15 |
| To pour triumphant through the breach | |
| In wall that shed like snowflakes tons | |
| Of missiles from old-fashioned guns, | |
| But crumble 'neath the storm that pours | |
| All day and night from bigger bores. | 20 |
| There, as I hopeless watch and wait | |
| The last life-crushing coil of Fate, | |
| Despair finds solace in the praise | |
| Of those serene dawn-rosy days | |
| Ere microscopes had made us heirs | 25 |
| To large estates of doubts and snares, | |
| By proving that the title-deeds, | |
| Once all-sufficient for men's needs, | |
| Are palimpsests that scarce disguise | |
| The tracings of still earlier lies, | 30 |
| Themselves as surely written o'er | |
| An older fib erased before. | |
| |
| So from these days I fly to those | |
| That in the landlocked Past repose, | |
| Where no rude wind of doctrine shakes | 35 |
| From bloom-flushed boughs untimely flakes; | |
| Where morning's eyes see nothing strange, | |
| No crude perplexity of change, | |
| And morrows trip along their ways | |
| Secure as happy yesterdays. | 40 |
| Then there were rulers who could trace | |
| Through heroes up to gods their race, | |
| Pledged to fair fame and noble use | |
| By veins from Odin filled or Zeus, | |
| And under bonds to keep divine | 45 |
| The praise of a celestial line. | |
| Then priests could pile the altar's sods, | |
| With whom gods spake as they with gods, | |
| And everywhere from haunted earth | |
| Broke springs of wonder, that had birth | 50 |
| In depths divine beyond the ken | |
| And fatal scrutiny of men; | |
| Then hills and groves and streams and seas | |
| Thrilled with immortal presences, | |
| Not too ethereal for the scope | 55 |
| Of human passion's dream or hope. | |
| |
| Now Pan at last is surely dead, | |
| And King No-Credit reigns instead, | |
| Whose officers, morosely strict, | |
| Poor Fancy's tenantry evict, | 60 |
| Chase the last Genius from the door, | |
| And nothing dances any more. | |
| Nothing? Ah, yes, our tables do, | |
| Drumming the Old One's own tattoo, | |
| And, if the oracles are dumb, | 65 |
| Have we not mediums? Why be glum? | |
| Fly thither? Why, the very air | |
| Is full of hindrance and despair! | |
| Fly thither? But I cannot fly; | |
| My doubts enmesh me if I try,— | 70 |
| Each lilliputian, but, combined, | |
| Potent a giant's limbs to bind. | |
| This world and that are growing dark; | |
| A huge interrogation mark, | |
| The Devil's crook episcopal, | 75 |
| Still borne before him since the Fall, | |
| Blackens with its ill-omened sign | |
| The old blue heaven of faith benign. | |
| |
| Whence? Whither? Wherefore? How? Which? Why? | |
| All ask at once, all wait reply. | 80 |
| Men feel old systems cracking under 'em; | |
| Life saddens to a mere conundrum | |
| Which once Religion solved, but she | |
| Has lost—has Science found?—the key. | |
| |
| What was snow-bearded Odin, trow, | 85 |
| The mighty hunter long ago, | |
| Whose horn and hounds the peasant hears | |
| Still when the Northlights shake their spears? | |
| Science hath answers twain, I 've heard; | |
| Choose which you will, nor hope a third; | 90 |
| Whichever box the truth be stowed in, | |
| There 's not a sliver left of Odin. | |
| Either he was a pinchbrowed thing, | |
| With scarcely wit a stone to fling, | |
| A creature both in size and shape | 95 |
| Nearer than we are to the ape, | |
| Who hung sublime with brat and spouse | |
| By tail prehensile from the boughs, | |
| And, happier than his maimed descendants, | |
| The culture-curtailed independents, | 100 |
| Could pluck his cherries with both paws, | |
| And stuff with both his big-boned jaws; | |
| Or else the core his name enveloped | |
| Was from a solar myth developed, | |
| Which, hunted to its primal shoot, | 105 |
| Takes refuge in a Sanskrit root, | |
| Thereby to instant death explaining | |
| The little poetry remaining. | |
| |
| Try it with Zeus, 't is just the same; | |
| The thing evades, we hug a name; | 110 |
| Nay, scarcely that,—perhaps a vapor | |
| Born of some atmospheric caper. | |
| All Lempriere's fables blur together | |
| In cloudy symbols of the weather, | |
| And Aphrodite rose from frothy seas | 115 |
| But to illustrate such hypotheses. | |
| With years enough behind his back, | |
| Lincoln will take the selfsame track, | |
| And prove, hulled fairly to the cob, | |
| A mere vagary of Old Prob. | 120 |
| Give the right man a solar myth, | |
| And he 'll confute the sun therewith. | |
| They make things admirably plain, | |
| But one hard question will remain: | |
| If one hypothesis you lose, | 125 |
| Another in its place you choose, | |
| But, your faith gone, O man and brother, | |
| Whose shop shall furnish you another? | |
| One that will wash, I mean, and wear, | |
| And wrap us warmly from despair? | 130 |
| While they are clearing up our puzzles, | |
| And clapping prophylactic muzzles | |
| On the Actæon's hounds that sniff | |
| Our devious track through But and If, | |
| Would they 'd explain away the Devil | 135 |
| And other facts that won't keep level, | |
| But rise beneath our feet or fail, | |
| A reeling ship's deck in a gale! | |
| God vanished long ago, iwis, | |
| A mere subjective synthesis; | 140 |
| A doll, stuffed out with hopes and fears, | |
| Too homely for us pretty dears, | |
| Who want one that conviction carries, | |
| Last make of London or of Paris. | |
| He gone, I felt a moment's spasm, | 145 |
| But calmed myself with Protoplasm, | |
| A finer name, and, what is more, | |
| As enigmatic as before; | |
| Greek, too, and sure to fill with ease | |
| Minds caught in the Symplegades | 150 |
| Of soul and sense, life's two conditions, | |
| Each baffled with its own omniscience. | |
| The men who labor to revise | |
| Our Bibles will, I hope, be wise, | |
| And print it without foolish qualms | 155 |
| Instead of God in David's psalms: | |
| Noll had been more effective far | |
| Could he have shouted at Dunbar, | |
| "Rise, Protoplasm!" No dourest Scot | |
| Had waited for another shot. | 160 |
| |
| And yet I frankly must confess | |
| A secret unforgivingness, | |
| And shudder at the saving chrism | |
| Whose best New Birth is Pessimism; | |
| My soul—I mean the bit of phosphorus | 165 |
| That fills the place of what that was for us— | |
| Can't bid its inward bores defiance | |
| With the new nursery-tales of science. | |
| What profits me, though doubt by doubt, | |
| As nail by nail, be driven out, | 170 |
| When every new one, like the last, | |
| Still holds my coffin-lid as fast? | |
| Would I find thought a moment's truce, | |
| Give me the young world's Mother Goose | |
| With life and joy in every limb, | 175 |
| The chimney-corner tales of Grimm! | |
| |
| Our dear and admirable Huxley | |
| Cannot explain to me why ducks lay, | |
| Or, rather, how into their eggs | |
| Blunder potential wings and legs | 180 |
| With will to move them and decide | |
| Whether in air or lymph to glide. | |
| Who gets a hair's-breadth on by showing | |
| That Something Else set all agoing? | |
| Farther and farther back we push | 185 |
| From Moses and his burning bush; | |
| Cry, "Art Thou there?" Above, below, | |
| All Nature mutters yes and no! | |
| 'T is the old answer: we 're agreed | |
| Being from Being must proceed, | 190 |
| Life be Life's source. I might as well | |
| Obey the meeting-house's bell, | |
| And listen while Old Hundred pours | |
| Forth through the summer-opened doors, | |
| From old and young. I hear it yet, | 195 |
| Swelled by bass-viol and clarinet, | |
| While the gray minister, with face | |
| Radiant, let loose his noble bass. | |
| |
| If Heaven it reached not, yet its roll | |
| Waked all the echoes of the soul, | 200 |
| And in it many a life found wings | |
| To soar away from sordid things. | |
| Church gone and singers too, the song | |
| Sings to me voiceless all night long, | |
| Till my soul beckons me afar, | 205 |
| Glowing and trembling like a star. | |
| Will any scientific touch | |
| With my worn strings achieve as much? | |
| I don't object, not I, to know | |
| My sires were monkeys, if 't was so; | 210 |
| I touch my ear's collusive tip | |
| And own the poor-relationship. | |
| That apes of various shapes and sizes | |
| Contained their germs that all the prizes | |
| Of senate, pulpit, camp, and bar win | 215 |
| May give us hopes that sweeten Darwin. | |
| Who knows but from our loins may spring | |
| (Long hence) some winged sweet-throated thing | |
| As much superior to us | |
| As we to Cynocephalus? | 220 |
| |
| This is consoling, but, alas, | |
| It wipes no dimness from the glass | |
| Where I am flattening my poor nose, | |
| In hope to see beyond my toes. | |
| Though I accept my pedigree, | 225 |
| Yet where, pray tell me, is the key | |
| That should unlock a private door | |
| To the Great Mystery, such no more? | |
| Each offers his, but one nor all | |
| Are much persuasive with the wall | 230 |
| That rises now, as long ago, | |
| Between I wonder and I know, | |
| Nor will vouchsafe a pin-hole peep | |
| At the veiled Isis in its keep. | |
| Where is no door, I but produce | 235 |
| My key to find it of no use. | |
| Yet better keep it, after all, | |
| Since Nature 's economical, | |
| And who can tell but some fine day | |
| (If it occur to her) she may, | 240 |
| In her good-will to you and me, | |
| Make door and lock to match the key? | |
