Changing the conversation of the day
To accents strange and unintelligible,
Unlike to common and accepted terms;
To tones mysterious and unnatural,
Conglomerated forms of utterance
Which bore no semblance to the human voice.
Some rent the air with unaccustomed words
Striving in desperation to converse,
With ears which heard, but could not understand.
Some cursed, with oaths unknown to all but them,
While some essayed to frame the words of prayer,
Or to articulate the stern command,
And one, in most supreme authority,
Declaimed a ponderous regal ordinance,
But heard a sea of unfamiliar sounds,
Confused and desultory turbulence, and dissonance of harsh,
discordant tones,
Instead of due attention and applause;
Nor were his words and usual forms of speech
Respected by the idle, wondering craft,
Which lately comprehended and obeyed.
Workmen addressed each other, but conveyed
No sense of meaning in their jargonings;
Nor had cognizance from the stammered tones,
Answered in turn, in verbal nothingness;
The crabbed cynic might no longer rail;
Nor those of sober countenance discourse
In melancholy and foreboding strains;
Nor light and frivolous sons of levity
On others perpetrate the humorous jest;
Fathers attempted to correct their sons,
Who, listening with filial reverence,
Heard but unknown and strange garrulity.
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