Were the old gods watching yet,
From their cloudy summits afar,
At evening under the evening star,
After the star is set,
Would they see in these thronging streets,
Where the life of the city beats
With endless rush and strain,
Men of a better mold,
Nobler in heart and brain,
Than the men of three thousand years ago,
In the pagan cities old,
O'er which the lichens and ivy grow?
Would they not see as they saw
In the younger days of the race,
The dark results of broken law,
In the bent form and brutal face
Of the slave of passions as old as earth,
And young as the infants of last night's birth?
Alas! the old gods no longer keep
Their watch from the cloudy steep;
But, though all on Olympus lie dead
Yet the smoke of commerce still rolls
From the sacrifice of souls,
To the heaven that bends overhead.