Classic Poem

The sunny rounds of Earth contain
An obverse to its Day,
Our fertile Vagrancy's domain,
Wan Proletaria.

From pole to pole of Poverty
We stumble through the years,
With hazy-lanterned Memory
And hope that never nears.

Wherever Plenty's crop invites
Our pitiful brigades
Lurk cannoneers of Vested Rights,
Juristic ambuscades;

And here hangs Rent, that squalid cage
Within which Mammon thrusts,
Bound with the fetter of a wage,
The helots of his lusts.

With palsied Doubt as guide, we wind
Among the lanes of Need,
Where meagre Hungers scouting find
But slavered baits of Greed.

What wonder sometimes if in stealth
Our starker outposts wait,
And, in the prowling eyes of Wealth,
Dash vitriol of Hate;

Or if our Samsons, ere too late,
Their treasons should make good
By whelming in the temple's fate
Their viper owner's brood!

Tho' blind and dull, 'tis we supply
The Painter's dazzling dreams;
The rolling flood of Poetry
From our dumb chaos streams.

Nay, when your world is over-tired,
And Genius comatose,
Our race, by Nemesis inspired,
Old order overthrows:

With earthquake-life we thrill your land,
Refill the cruse of Art,
Revitalize spent Wisdom, and —
Resume our weary part.

The palace of successful Guilt
Is mortared with our shame;
On hecatombs of Us are built
The soaring towers of Fame.

Religion's dolmens, Sphinxes, spires,
Her biblic armories;
The helot lightning of the wires
That mesh your lands and seas;

The viaducts 'tween Near and Far,
Whereon, o'er range and mead,
Bacchantic Trade's triumphant car
And iron tigers speed;

The modern steely crops that rise
Where technic Jasons sow:
All these but feebly symbolize
The largesse we bestow.

And our reward? In this wan land,
In clientage of Greed,
Despised, polluted, maimed and banned,
To wander and — to breed.