The age demanded an image - Of its accelerated grimace, Something for the modern stage, Not, at any rate, an Attic grace; Not, not certainly, the obscure reveries of the inward gaze; Better mendacities than the classics in paraphrase !

The tea-rose tea-gown, ...
Supplants the mousseline of Cos,
The pianola "replaces"
Sappho's barbitos.

Christ follows Dionysus,
Phallic and ambrosial
Made way for macerations;
Caliban casts out Ariel.

All things are a flowing,
Sage Heraclitus says;
But a tawdry cheapness
Shall outlast our days.

Even the Christian beauty
Defects - after Samothrace;
We see
Decreed in the market place.