I wandered to-day in an institute,
A wonderful palace of art,
And this I can say in spirit and truth,
It was a delight to my heart,
To see how the masters of ages past
Have found a place in this shrine,
Till I came to a room, methinks ’twas the last,
Which the Cubist’s contortions confine.
A disgrace, I said, to allow in this place,
What lunatic homes should adorn,
An insult to art and the human race,
Of spirits degenerate born,
A meaningless daub, a horrid display
Of colors and lines and all,
But then to myself I also did say:
May be ’tis the age--and its soul.
A wicked word it was this to say,
As I left for the congested street,
And followed the masses which made their way
To a place where ten thousand did meet
Three times a day, to be edified
With burlesque, in Jesus name,
And painfully in my soul it cried:
“The Cubist again, just the same!”
I glanced at a paper at hour of sleep,
And found a whole page about bards,
Who gained a renown by a single leap,
With something which all art discards,
Again I said: ’tis the Cubist’s age,
A prophet is he after all,
Of the church and the stage and the printed page,
Of the age that has bartered its soul.