Impressions 



Diluted Homer, Virgil, Horace, those , ; 



Who framed a worthy song; who sang like men 

 A weak solution of majestic prose 



And mightier verse from Shakespeare's magic pen 

 Faint echo of the songs that poets writ 



When Byron flashed like meteor in the sky 

 The ghastly relic of a noble wit 



Such modern poetry is, alas! And why? 



Is there no story wortk the telling left? 



Must rhythm never leave the time-worn rut? 

 Are we of novel thought and deed bereft, 



No unsealed mountain from our outlook jut, 

 O'er which to clamber, giving view unthought 



Of this wide world? Or, is all commonplace? 

 To a dead level human action brought, 



Outworn, old Earth; exhausted time and space? 



123 



