Page:Free Opinions, Freely Expressed on Certain Phases of Modern Social Life and Conduct.djvu/104

 are plenty of clever "sketchy" artists,—"impressionist" painters and fictionists, "rococo" sculptors, and melodious drawing-room song-writers,—but we wait in vain for a new "grand" opera, a nobly-inspired statue, a novel like "Guy Mannering," or a Cathedral, such as the devout old monks designed in the intervals between prayer and praise. The beautiful and poetic ideals that made such work possible are, if not quite dead, slowly dying, under the influence of the "blight" which infects the social atmosphere,—the blight which is thick with Self and Sensuality,—which looms between man and his Maker, shutting out every hopeful glimpse of the sun of faith, whose life-giving rays invigorate the soul. And those who see it slowly darkening—those who have been and are students of history, and are thereby able to recognize its appearance, its meaning, and its mission, and who know the mischief wrought by the poison it exhales, will pray for a Storm!

"Come but the direst storm and stress that Fate Can bring upon us in its darkest hour, Then will the realm awake, however late, From the warm sloth in which we yawn and cower, And pass our sordid lives in greed, or mate With animal delights in luxury's bower; Then will the ancient virtues bloom anew, And love of country quench the love of gold; Then will the mocking spirits that imbue Our daily converse fade like misty cold When the clear sunshine permeates the blue; Men will be manly as in days of old, And scorn the base delights that sink them down Into the languid waters where they drown!"