This is the Age of Scramble; men move faster than they did 160 When they pried up the imperial Past's deep-dusted coffin-lid, Searching for scrolls of precedent; the wire-leashed lightning now Replaces Delphos--men don't leave the steamer for the scow; What public, were they new to-day, would ever stop to read The Iliad, the Shanàmeh, or the Nibelungenlied? _Their_ public's gone, the artist Greek, the lettered Shah, the hairy Graf-- Folio and plesiosaur sleep well; _we_ weary o'er a paragraph; The mind moves planet-like no more, it fizzes, cracks, and bustles; From end to end with journals dry the land o'ershadowed rustles, As with dead leaves a winter-beech, and, with their breath-roused jars 170 Amused, we care not if they hide the eternal skies and stars; Down to the general level of the Board of Brokers sinking, The Age takes in the newspapers, or, to say sooth unshrinking, The newspapers take in the Age, and stocks do all the thinking. AN ORIENTAL APOLOGUE Somewhere in India, upon a time, (Read it not Injah, or you spoil the verse,) There dwelt two saints whose privilege sublime It was to sit and watch the world grow worse, Their only care (in that delicious clime) At proper intervals to pray and curse; Pracrit the dialect each prudent brother Used for himself, Damnonian for the other. One half the time of each was spent in praying For blessings on his own unworthy head, 10 The other half in fearfully portraying Where certain folks would go when they were dead; This system of exchanges--there's no saying To what more solid barter 'twould have led, But that a river, vext with boils and swellings At rainy times, kept peace between their dwellings. So they two played at wordy battledore And kept a curse forever in the air, Flying this way or that from shore to shore; Nor other labor did this holy pair, 20 Clothed and supported from the lavish store Which crowds lanigerous brought with daily care; They toiled not, neither did they spin; their bias Was tow'rd the harder task of being pious. Each from his hut rushed six score times a day, Like a great canon of the Church full-rammed With cartridge theologic, (so to say,) Touched himself off, and then, recoiling, slammed His hovel's door behind him in away That to his foe said plainly,--_you'll_ be damned; 30 And so like Potts and Wainwright, shrill and strong The two D---- D'd each other all day long. One was a dancing Dervise, a Mohammedan, The other was a Hindoo, a gymnosophist; One kept his whatd'yecallit and his Ramadan, Laughing to scorn the sacred rites and laws of his Transfluvial rival, who, in turn, called Ahmed an Old top, and, as a clincher, shook across a fist With nails six inches long, yet lifted not His eyes from off his navel's mystic knot. 40