Classic Poem

Life in these modern days strange freaks assumes;
Old truth retires, and feeble falsehood comes;
Fiction and fancy, all the live-long day,
And airy nothings, are the things that pay.

The loudest, lightest, for the worthiest pass, —
As rise balloons, because their filled with gas.
Men scorn the wisdom of the hoary sage,
And eloquently boast this learned age: —

An age of shallow wit and weak pretence,
Whose greatest want is want of common sense;
The gaping crowd admires each changing scene,
As some new wonder, — for the crowd is green.

Fashions and follies bear the masses by,
And silks and ribbons, with their rainbow dye,
Or flutter in the air, a graceful show,
Or sweep the dusty thoroughfares below.

Along the street their gaudy pageants glide,
Gay as the butterflies of summertide, —
With equal beauty, equal lightness fraught,
As little burdened with the weight of thought.

Perchance, but spendthrifts on an empty purse;
Perchance, the victims, too, of something worse.
An eloquence of manner often tells,
Some things have naught but tongues, besides church bells.