Classic Poem

Yet — I put down the volumes. . . . There is gone
The god that in these pages once we found.
Too swift, too pitiless has our fate whirled on
That we turn back to that once-holy ground.
No magic can restore, ever again,
The confident promise of those earlier years.
For we have seen the very sunlight wane,
And watched our world go down in blood and tears.
Towers of our spirit crumbled in their pride
When century-carved cathedrals fell in flame.
A hope of ours died where each soldier died;
And we endured all of each nation's shame —
Shame, for the race of which we were a part
That held such treachery in its secret heart.

And so, tonight, seeing the hopes that fail,
Seeing the brute that is a part of man,
I think that Galahad and his Holy Grail
Had best make way for some less gilded plan.
We, lewd and savage cousins of the ape,
May well cease boasting of our family tree,
And with a certain modesty try to shape
A dream more consonant with reality. . . .
— As a poor madman, guessing that his brain
Inherits some defect of fatal blood,
Accepts the curse of an accursed strain,
And halts, midway in his grandiloquent mood —
And for one honest hour, ceases to boast
His lordship of that forest where he is lost!