All this is gone-- Gone glimmering down the ways Of old, loved things of our lost yesterdays, After the little tollgate by the spring. And the gatekeeper odd Rests in the quiet sod, Safe in the arms of God Where thrushes sing. Even the spring has gone, for long ago They walled that in, And its dark waters flow A sunless way along; And no one stops to wonder where they go, For no one hears their song.
Only a few old hearts Of these much changed parts, Whose time will soon run out on all the clocks, Catching the scent of clover, Live all the old days over When Shady avenue was Shady lane.
Do you not see, you American people, What the triangle means? Mind, soul, body. Man is to live and die In a little metaphysical, three-roomed apartment, Office, chapel, and kitchenette.
As I sat and listened to the words of the wise man, I looked out of the window And suddenly a feeling of great well-being came on me. I saw that I was made of the same stuff as the hillside And that tomorrow I would be flowers, Or dance in the dust motes in the sun And that all things are one.
Then two laughing children came And threw a stone into a fountain And the ring widened till it was lost in the pool. Behold a sign! And I awoke and the wise man babbled like a fool.
And yet, O Great Republic, The symbol of your state church Is a triangle, blood red, Pointing downward.
Around the courthouse corner from the square, Where Poet Timrod's bust stands in the glare, There is an ancient office shuttered tight, With fluted pillars and the paint worn bare. Seldom, if ever now, do passing feet Disturb that little, cobbled _cul-de-sac_ Or rouse dull echoes in the quiet street Where time has eddied back. Only the old judge comes, With quivering hands and thin, With palsied scraping at the rusty lock And enters in.
He is the last of all the courtly men, Those lion-hearts who knew their Montesquieu, And fought for what he taught them, too, The STATE was something then-- But now--but now--he seems a very ghost That haunts the little office off the square, A Rip Van Winkle of the place at most At which to stare. Only on Saturdays he goes, And no one knows, And enters by the dusty, blinded door, And sits and sits While the long sunlight streams between the slits And the rats scurry underneath the floor. And there he stays all afternoon; The wagons rumble in the square, And the cracked, plaster bust of grim Calhoun Frowns with its classic stare. What dreams are these, old judge, of the old days, When cotton bales made mountains on the ways, When clipper ships were loading at the quays-- Or statelier, courtlier times of ease And manners without flaw, When _Smythe & Pringle_, The name is all but weathered from the shingle, Were the state's foremost firm at law.