THE DEGENERATE AGE.

Globe, Volume XXIV, Issue 2644, 28 September 1882, Page 4

THE DEGENERATE AGE.

Ah! those days have gone for ever, with their splendid fire and fever, And their lofty scorn of living, and their quenchless thirst of fame ! When faith and beauty filled them, and when love and glory thrilled them, And the sacred light of Honor led them like a flitting flame! And tho minstrels, tender-hearted! they are •ilent aud departed. - With their amatory music, once so delicate and sweet j How wo never sigh to hear them, but we fly them and we fear them— Grinding melancholy organs on the corners of the street. Gone the Pirate and the Sea King, and BuoConner and Yiking j Varied the banner of the Bover, hashed his cannon’s heavy roar j And the only reminiscence of his nautical existence Is the banging of the big drum in the play of “ Pinafore.” Gone’s tho glamor and the glory of the Knights of song and story. With their love and high endeavor, and their noble deeds and aims I Of heroic days behind us, now there’s nothing to remind ua Bat the Solitary Horseman in the narrative of James ! Yes 1 the Knights so celebrated, in thesodays degenerated, Would be madmen or marauders—we would ridicule their cause— And the Pirate of the shipping would be hanged, or get a whipping, And the Troubadours be prisoned under local vagrant laws. How the soul that scorns to grovel, can but revel in the novel Of Sir Walter Scott or Bolwer, on the days of long ago 1 And of Brian de Bonrbeon, and of mighty Cosnr de Lion, And of Lanncelot and Arthur, and immortal Innhoe. Voc the prosy and pedantic have extinguished the romantic, And the pomp aud pride of chivalry are driven from the stage ; Ail is now so faint and tender that the world has lost its gender. And the enervate JEsthstfo is the model of the Age!