BETTER a pauper, penniless, asleep on the kindly sod--Better a gipsy, houseless, but near to the heart of God, That beats for ears not dulled by the clanking wheels of care--Better starvation and freedom, hope and the good fresh air Than death to the Something in him that was born to laugh and dream, That was kin to the idle lilies and the ripples of the stream.
For out of the dreams of childhood, that careless come and go, The boy gains strength, unknowing, that the Man will prove and know.
But these fools with their lies and their dollars, their mills and their bloody hands, Who make a god of a wheel, who worship their whirring bands, They are flinging the life of a people, raw, to the brute machines.
Dull-eyed, weary, and old--old in his early teens--Stunted and stupid and twisted, marred in the mills of grief, Can your factories fashion a Man of this thing--a Man and a Chief?
Dumb is the heart of him now, at the time when his heart should sing--Wasters of body and brain, what race will the future bring?
What of the nation's nerve whenas swift crises come?
What of the brawn that should heave the guns on the beck of the drum?
Thieves of body and soul, who can neither think nor feel, Swine-eyed priests of little false gods of gold and steel, Bow to your obscene altars, worship your loud mills then!
Feed to Moloch and Baal the brawn and brains of men--But silent and watchful and hidden forever over all The masters brood of those Mills that "grind exceeding small."
And it needs no occult art nor magic to foreshow That a people who sow defeat they will reap the thing they sow.
