The Age Of The Antonines

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