Say it is drift, not progress, none the less, With the old sextant of the fathers’ creed, We shape our courses by new-risen stars, And, still lip-loyal to what once was truth, Smuggle new meanings under ancient names, Unconscious perverts of the Jesuit, Time. Change is the mask that all Continuance wears To keep us youngsters harmlessly amused; Meanwhile some ailing or more watchful child, Sitting apart, sees the old eyes gleam out, Stern, and yet soft with humorous pity too. Whilere, men burnt men for a doubtful point, As if the mind were quenchable with fire, And Faith danced round them with her war-paint on, Devoutly savage as an Iroquois; Now Calvin and Servetus at one board Snuff in grave sympathy a milder roast, And o’er their claret settle Comte unread. Fagot and stake were desperately sincere: Our cooler martyrdoms are done in types; And flames that shine in controversial eyes Burn out no brains but his who kindles them. This is no age to get cathedrals built: Did God, then, wait for one in Bethlehem? Worst is not yet: lo, where his coming looms, Of Earth’s anarchic children latest born, Democracy, a Titan who hath learned To laugh at Jove’s old-fashioned thunderbolts,-- Could he not also forge them, if he would? He, better skilled, with solvents merciless, Loosened in air and borne on every wind, Saps unperceived: the calm Olympian height Of ancient order feels its bases yield, And pale gods glance for help to gods as pale. What will be left of good or worshipful, Of spiritual secrets, mysteries, Of fair religion’s guarded heritage, Heirlooms of soul, passed downward unprofaned From eldest Ind? This Western giant coarse, Scorning refinements which he lacks himself, Loves not nor heeds the ancestral hierarchies, Each rank dependent on the next above In orderly gradation fixed as fate. King by mere manhood, nor allowing aught Of holier unction than the sweat of toil; In his own strength sufficient; called to solve, On the rough edges of society, Problems long sacred to the choicer few, And improvise what elsewhere men receive As gifts of deity; tough foundling reared Where every man’s his own Melchisedek, How make him reverent of a King of kings? Or Judge self-made, executor of laws By him not first discussed and voted on? For him no tree of knowledge is forbid, Or sweeter if forbid. How save the ark, Or holy of holies, unprofaned a day From his unscrupulous curiosity That handles everything as if to buy, Tossing aside what fabrics delicate Suit not the rough-and-tumble of his ways? What hope for those fine-nerved humanities That made earth gracious once with gentler arts, Now the rude hands have caught the trick of thought And claim an equal suffrage with the brain?