PROCEEDINGS. 
559 
In verse where any sense—or none—was stowed, 
Precursing Browning’s or Walt Whitman’s mode. 
But now the cosmologic drama ’s o’er, 
Mithra’s a myth, Great Pan pans out no more. 
Our world gives little scope to doctrine mystic— 
’Tis wary, doubting, stern, and realistic; 
Takes every axiom on strict probation, 
And calls for propter hoc and demonstration. 
So e’en in Washington when war was o’er 
Some students dared essay the modern lore— 
And reckless of its strange ubiety 
Founded the Philosophical Society. 
No more will Hercules’ and Juno’s fray 
Serve them as reason for the Milky Way. 
With calculus and spherics now they grope 
And ply the transit and the spectroscope ; 
Or if they in another branch enlist, 
They bother with conglomerate and schist, 
Erosions, monoclinals, hypogenes, 
Jurassics, mesozoics, miocenes, 
The argillites and trilobites, 
The kyanites and oolites, 
And staurolites and diorites— 
But now I find my task is too vexatious 
To catalogue granitic and cretaceous. 
I’d need the metrical address of Horace 
To cap a perfect rhyme with ichthyosaurus, 
And though in dactyls I might blythely sing, 
A pterodactyl’s quite another thing. 
They took all fields. Their mathematic skill 
Could square the circle or a plumber’s bill. 
Chemists could analyze a Congress speech, 
State what was “ring” and what was Buncombe screech. 
Another pundit, if you listen, shows 
All that you wish or anybody knows 
About the tribes of Lo’s, 
Cheyennes and Crows, 
Crees and Arapahoes, 
Red Cloud and Spotted Tail and Roman Nose, 
And notes on Crazy Horse, comparing lore 
To prove he was the Pegasus of yore; 
That Sitting Bull to Minotaur is kin, 
Though hid without a clue he saved his skin. 
Our sacred Sessions truest rapture draw 
When mutual admiration is the law, 
