THE APPARITION
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Weaver, Raymond M. (Raymond Melbourne)
The slumberous combustibles
Sure to explode. ’Twill come, ’twill come!
One demagogue can trouble much:
How of a hundred thousand such?
Indeed, those germs one now may view:
Myriads playing pygmy parts—
Debased into equality:
Dead level of rank commonplace:
An Anglo-Saxon China, see,
May on your vast plains shame the race
In the Dark Ages of Democracy.
Your arts advance in faith’s decay:
You are but drilling the new Hun
Whose growl even now can some dismay;
Vindictive is his heart of hearts.
He schools him in your mines and marts
A skilled destroyer.
Old ballads sing
Fair Christian children crucified
By impious Jews: you’ve heard the thing:
Yes, fable; but there’s truth hard by:
How many Hughs of Lincoln, say,
Does Mammon, in his mills, to-day,
Crook, if he does not crucify?
The impieties of “Progress” speak;
What say these, in effect to God?
“How profits it? And who art Thou
That we should serve Thee? Of Thy ways
No knowledge we desire; new ways
We have found out, and better. Go—
Depart from us!”—And if He do?
Is aught betwixt us and the hells?
Against all this stands Rome’s array:
Rome is the Protestant to-day.
The Red Republic slinging flame
In Europe—she’s your Scarlet Dame.
Rome stands: but who may tell the end?
Relapse barbaric may impend,
Dismission into ages blind—
Moral dispersion of mankind.