Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/186

POEMS OF OCCASION Leaps up to find a ruthless, warring band,

Dust, strife, an untried weapon in his hand!

The time unto itself is strange,

Driven on from change to change,

Neither of past nor present sure,

The ideal vanished nor the real secure.

Heaven has faded from the skies,

Faith hides apart and weeps with clouded eyes;

A noise of cries we hear, a noise of creeds,

While the old heroic deeds

Not of the leaders now are told, as then,

But of lowly, common men.

See by what paths the loud-voiced gain

Their little heights above the plain:

Truth, honor, virtue, cast away

For the poor plaudits of a day!

Now fashion guides at will

The artists brush, the writer's quill,

While, for a weary time unknown,

The reverent workman toils alone,

Asking for bread and given but a stone.

Fettered with gold the statesman's tongue;

Now, even the church, among

New doubts and strange discoveries, half in vain

Defends her long, ancestral reign;

Now, than all others grown more great,

That which was the last estate

By turns reflects and rules the age,—

Laughs, scolds, weeps, counsels, jeers,—a jester and sage!

V

ENCHANTMENTS

in Learning's shaded haunt,

The battle-fugue and mingled cries forlorn

Softened to music seem, nor the clear spirit daunt; 156