While faith forecasts millennial years <br />Spite Europe's embattled lines, <br />Back to the Past one glance be cast-- <br />The Age of the Antonines! <br />O summit of fate, O zenith of time <br />When a pagan gentleman reigned, <br />And the olive was nailed to the inn of the <br />world <br />Nor the peace of the just was feigned. <br />A halcyon Age, afar it shines, <br />Solstice of Man and the Antonines. <br /> <br />Hymns to the nations' friendly gods <br />Went up from the fellowly shrines, <br />No demagogue beat the pulpit-drum <br />In the Age of the Antonines! <br />The sting was not dreamed to be taken from <br />death, <br />No Paradise pledged or sought, <br />But they reasoned of fate at the flowing feast, <br />Nor stifled the fluent thought, <br />We sham, we shuffle while faith declines-- <br />They were frank in the Age of the Antonines. <br /> <br />Orders and ranks they kept degree, <br />Few felt how the parvenu pines, <br />No law-maker took the lawless one's fee <br />In the Age of the Antonines! <br />Under law made will the world reposed <br />And the ruler's right confessed, <br />For the heavens elected the Emperor then, <br />The foremost of men the best. <br />Ah, might we read in America's signs <br />The Age restored of the Antonines.<br /><br />Herman Melville<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-age-of-the-antonines/
