1947

Weighing the ages makes a social game:

Simple to blame and praise resistless dead.

"Choose it," he said, "leaf back time's dirty pages,

Choose your pet days and seriously name

The time you'd best have lived. Pick one," he said.

The trim past beckons: we select a sire,

Spenser's brave courtier, eighteenth century squire,

Victorian rebel, early Christian or

Young Rupert Brooke before the First World War.

Live without sulfa drugs? No anaesthesia?

When sweethearts died for lack of penicillin?

When surgeons' tools were full of germs and dirt?

When sex was warped and even dentists hurt?

All pyramids rest on inarticulate sorrows

But still it can be cozy at the top

Where sit the wise and kindly gentlemen

Free to be good, privileged to inquire,

Released to search for truth. Nice to be there.

Plato had slaves, and may I even doubt

If Christ did his own laundry? *

Queen Anne wits lauded Homer, but they knew

The world had blossomed for their happy few.

Serene by candle-light the skeptic Hume

Sipped Claret in his well-appointed room.

Macaulay welcomed progress. Robert Browning

Managed to keep his faith alive by clowning.

Adam took comfort: and from Egypt land

Purposeful Moses led his interested band.

And here we are, full of potential bliss,

Crying in chorus: "Anything but this!"