Classic Poem

Now returns the season of misty mornings:
From this inland pagoda, before my breakfast,
I hear the boats whistling
In the Gulf of Shi-pa-hoy.
What mellow groaning and musical interchange!
They sound to me like the cries of philosophers
Plaintively feeling their dangerous way
Through the fogs of metaphysical error.
I seem to hear
The soft faint drone of Confucius,
The confident boom of Lord Bacon,
The perplexed rumble of Coleridge,
The hoarse jarring mutter of Schopenhauer,
The clear siren of Santayana,
The shrill hoot of Voltaire!