Classic Poem

There are who bid us chant this modern age,
With all its shifting hopes and crowded cares,
School-boards and land-laws, votes and state-affairs,
And, one by one, the puny wars we wage;
They charge us with our lyric flutes assuage
The hunger that the lean-ribbed peasant bears,
Or wreathe our laurel round the last gray hairs
Of the old pauper in his workhouse-cage, —
Not wisely; for the round world spins so fast,
Leaps in the air, staggers, and shoots, and halts, —
We know not what is false or what is true;
But in the firm perspectives of the past
We see the picture duly, and its faults
Are softly moulded by a filmy blue.