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Where he forgot his poverty and pain.

What are your knowledge and inventions worth,

If they destroy man’s fleeting happiness,—

Illusion’s chiefest offspring, and life’s goal?

Far better then the hut and back-log coal

Than mansions lighted by the magic press,

But without fairies and a glowing hearth.

Sordino’s age was not like ours—of engines;

No Kipling to bid romance a farewell,

No wonders in the realm of rods and wheels,

No squeaking phonographs and Chaplin reels,

No railroads, autos, and, what was as well,

No Zeppelins, no bombs and submarines.

His was the vanished day of simple living,

Of child-like faith in man, and things unseen,

When next God’s footstool poet, prophet stood,

And told that all which makes man glad is good,

That ever Eden’s Tree of Life is green,

And to the world its leaves of healing giving.

And such a leaf was any happy dream,—

An omen or a message from beyond,

As truly as in good Hellenic days,

When at the Sibyl’s cave men found their ways,—

And to Sordino its illusion fond