"Frères et matres, vous qui cultivez"—PAUL VERVILLE.  
Hey, my masters, lords and brothers, ye that till the fields of rhyme,
Are ye deaf ye will not hearken to the clamor of your time?
 
Still ye blot and change and polish—vary, heighten and transpose—
Old sonorous metres marching grandly to their tranquil close.
 
Ye have toiled and ye have fretted; ye attain perfected speech:
Ye have nothing new to utter and but platitudes to preach.
 
And your rhymes are all of loving, as within the old days when
Love was lord of the ascendant in the horoscopes of men.
 
Still ye make of love the utmost end and scope of all your art;
And, more blind than he you write of, note not what a modest part
 
Loving now may claim in living, when we have scant time to spare,
Who are plundering the sea-depths, taking tribute of the air,—
 
Whilst the sun makes pictures for us; since to-day, for good or ill,
Earth and sky and sea are harnessed, and the lightnings work our will.
 
Hey, my masters, all these love-songs by dust-hidden mouths were sung
That ye mimic and re-echo with an artful-artless tongue,—............