ADVANTAGES
Have we less noise, less care, less crime,
More peace, more poise, more joy, more time,
Since undreamed speed decreed that we
Should measure leagues with instancy?
Have hours and days and years so saved
Conferred the leisure men have craved,
Or rendered plain the reason why
Unkindly clouds begloom our sky?
IMMUNITY
Find we ourselves more chaste and pure
Since dire diseases are grown fewer;
That now, forsooth, with tonsils out,
Past plagues are things that we may flout?
Think you that Nature sets aside
Effects of causes we deride,
Or fails to have her final way,
Though circumvented for the day:
That sheer immunity be won
Through some new serum "neath the sun?
SPECULATION
Must we believe a love of power
Ensouls and motivates the flower,
Or that the Sun be moved by greed
The while his light and life proceed?
Do you suppose his neighbor "Jones"
Who some more brilliant planet owns
Might make his golden beams turn green
And show him in a spleenful mien,
Or that the planets cease to sing
Because a comet must its fling?