Classic Poem

In vain the old, heroic Past
Unfolds its classic page,
In vain its priceless pearls are cast
Before our sceptic age.

The demigods, Time's noblest guests,
Hero and bard and seer,
Touched by the critic's chemic tests,
Dissolve and disappear.

Dispersed like mist, through Attic skies,
We see old Homer fade;
While Tell in Alpine vapor dies,
The shadow of a shade.

Now, ruder hands than those which tear
The Switzer from his Alp,
Aloft, with savage fury, bear
Our Pocahontas' scalp!

Virginia's Virgin, fairest form
Her native forests saw,
Flies, ghost-like, through the pelting storm,
A shivering, shrieking squaw.

Not thus to outer darkness thrust,
Not thus shall she depart,
So dear to boyhood's honest trust,
To girlhood's tender heart!

And while, to-night, the wild wind leaps
From the far, fierce Northwest,
From Adirondack's snowy deeps,
And Catskill's icy crest,

And past the Hudson's frozen banks,
With swift, relentless strokes,
Flies seaward, through the spectral ranks
Of our centennial oaks,

By hearthstones heaped with blazing pine,
The thrice-told tale we hear,
And gently on the ancient shrine
The shattered image rear.

The leaping, laughing tongues of flame
Mock the wild, wintry blast,
So shall our native fancies shame
The rude iconoclast!