Matter was monarch; Spirit stood apart, Unknown, unseen, or spurned and thrust aside By thronging myriads, bending supple knee, And basking in the proud usurper's smile. Men bowed not down to sun and moon and stars, To bird, nor beast, nor reptile, as of yore; But worshipt still at other creature shrines, Ignoring the Creator's primal claim. Pride sneered at poverty--if poor of purse, 2510 But gave its hand to beggared intellect, To bankrupt soul, and greeted them as peers. Learning, if lowly pillowing its head, A pauper deemed, and pitied or condemned. And many, stung by adder glance of scorn, Shunning a life of noble toil and care, To Mammon, e'en in marriage, sold themselves, Offering a lawless fire at passion's shrine, Or staining hands and heart with sabler sins. Shameful the serfdom of the earth-bound soul, 2520 Base passion's basest slave and prisoner; Charmed by no music but the clink of coin; Cankered and crusted o'er with avarice; Dupe, dreaming shadow real, and substance show. 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.