THE DEGENERATE AGE.

Observer, Volume v, Issue 115, 25 November 1882, Page 169

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 honour led them like a flitting A flaine ! And the minstrels, tender-hearted ! they- are silent a ; nd departed, With their, amatory music, once so delicate and ; Now we. never sigh to hear them, but we fly them . . and we fear them — Grinding melancholy organs on the corners of the street. Q-one the Pirate and the Sea King, and Bucea» neer and Viking ; Furled the banner of the Rover, hushed his cannon's heavy roar ; And the only reminiscence of his nautical existence Is the banging of the big drum in the play of " Pinafore." Grone the glamor and %he glory of the Knights of song and story, With their love and high endeavour, and their noble deeds and aims ! Of heroic days behind us, now there's nothing to remind us But the Solitary Horseman in the narrative of James ! Yes! the Knights so celebrated, in these days 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. Now the soul that scorns to grovel, can but revel in the novel Of Sir Walter Scott or Bulwer, on the days of long ago ; And of Brian de Bourbeon, and of Mighty Cceur de Lion, And of Launcelofc and Arthur, and immortal Ivanhoe. For the prosy and pedantic have extinguished the romantic, And the pomp and pride of chivalry are driven from the stage ; All is now so faint and tender that the world has lost its gender, And the enervate JEsthetic is the model of the Age!