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 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! 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), To pour triumphant through the breach In walls 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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, 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,-- 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, 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. 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.