Classic Poem

Farewell, Ravenna's forest! and farewell
For aye through coming centuries to the sound,
Over blue Adria, of the lyric pines,
And Chiassi's bird-song keeping burden sweet
To their low moan as once to Dante's lines,
Which when my step first felt Italian ground
I strove to follow, carried by the spell
Of that sad Florentine whose very street
(At morn and midnight) where he used to dwell
My father bade me pace with reverent feet.
Some rapid spirit, misapprehending this,
Will say, “Perchance our imbecile prefers
Pine woods to railways.” What! the living trees
To the dead sleepers of the vulgar track?
Yes; if men find in business all their bliss,
And if our Harvard Academe so errs
In counting Cicero something more than cheese
And Virgil's “ Gallus ” better than the clack
Of Brockton boot-shops and the lasts of Lynn,
Then let men cease a little from their brag
Of “ recti cultus roborant .” Go spin
The sooner to destruction with spread flag,—
Fools' commonwealth!—and trot thyself to death
With speed, and speed, but never once God-speed!
Because our age, like Judas, bears the bag,
And every scholar needs must bate his breath
If any black-thumbed boor waxed rich precede.
Plutus hath made God's image a machine
For minting dollars; and the nobler art,
Dante's, Boccaccio's, Dryden's, Byron's, mine,
Seems for its value in the public mart
Less than the song was of Ravenna's pine.