Yes, if you will allow me to say so,
I, my friends, if you do not, can plainly see her,
The same undying soul of earth’s, activity’s, beauty’s, heroism’s
    expression,
Out from her evolutions hither come, ended the strata of her former themes,
Hidden and cover’d by to-day’s, foundation of to-day’s,
Ended, deceas’d through time, her voice by Castaly’s fountain,
Silent the broken-lipp’d Sphynx in Egypt, silent all those century-
    baffling tombs,
Ended for aye the epics of Asia’s, Europe’s helmeted warriors, ended
    the primitive call of the muses,
Calliope’s call forever closed, Clio, Melpomene, Thalia dead,
Ended the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana, ended the quest of the
    holy Graal,
Jerusalem a handful of ashes blown by the wind, extinct,
The Crusaders’ streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with the sunrise,
Amadis, Tancred, utterly gone, Charlemagne, Roland, Oliver gone,
Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish’d the turrets that Usk from its
    waters reflected,
Arthur vanish’d with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and
    Galahad, all gone, dissolv’d utterly like an exhalation;
Pass’d! pass’d! for us, forever pass’d, that once so mighty world,
    now void, inanimate, phantom world,
Embroider’d, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous legends, myths,
Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and
    courtly dames,
Pass’d to its charnel vault, coffin’d with crown and armor on,
Blazon’d with Shakspere’s purple page,
And dirged by Tennyson’s sweet sad rhyme.

I say I see, my friends, if you do not, the illustrious emigre, (having it
    is true in her day, although the same, changed, journey’d considerable,)
Making directly for this rendezvous, vigorously clearing a path for
    herself, striding through the confusion,
By thud of machinery and shrill steam-whistle undismay’d,
Bluff’d not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers,
Smiling and pleas’d with palpable intent to stay,
She’s here, install’d amid the kitchen ware!

     4
But hold—­don’t I forget my manners? 
To introduce the stranger, (what else indeed do I live to chant
    for?) to thee Columbia;
In liberty’s name welcome immortal! clasp hands,
And ever henceforth sisters dear be both.

Fear not O Muse! truly new ways and days receive, surround you,
I candidly confess a queer, queer race, of novel fashion,
And yet the same old human race, the same within, without,
Faces and hearts the same, feelings the same, yearnings the same,
The same old love, beauty and use the same.

     5
We do not blame thee elder World, nor really separate ourselves from thee, (Would the son separate himself from the father?) Looking back on thee, seeing thee to thy duties, grandeurs, through
    past ages bending, building,
We build to ours to-day.