2
For whose keeping strives the toiler, though his lot be anguish-fraught,
Plodding on in Christian silence till to verge of madness brought,
Forced beside to fatten loafers, cheats and ne'er-do-well recruits,
Beggars, vagabonds and swindlers, highway robbers, murderous brutes;
Since the honest man's endeavor builds for every slothful wight
Prison, hospital and refuge—most humane and goodly sight!—
Whilst his own forlorn condition unbefriended still may go
Till himself has sunk to thieving, overpowered by want and woe.
Human Nature's conformation, back as far as Olaf's days:
Some to strive and strain forever, knowing naught of brighter ways,
Others shirking, arrant sluggards, save when sheerly hunger driven,
Then upon the toilers' earnings graceless-hearted these have thriven.
If perchance these airy loafers, brutal force the mastery gave,
High they soared as sovereign rulers, made the laborer but a slave;
Or, if haply they were weaker, strove through cunning and deceit—
In a fashion also modern—industry to gull and cheat,
Planting in the human bosom, sophist-wise with oily word
Seeds of supernatural folly, fabrications most absurd,
Bearing witness to the value of a mystic rigmarole,
Pap of phrases mixed and seasoned for the welfare of the soul.
Thus arrayed, the dual forces, like a mighty regiment,
Charged upon the weak opposers, careless of divine assent,
Potentates and hierarchies, unsustained by heavenly grace,
At their pleasure domineering o'er the feebler of the race.
And the darkness of the ages, ere the embryotic time
Of the old mosaic legend, swept and shadowed every clime.
Never any season fouler than the days of shameful mirth
When in Biblical tradition—came the deluge on the earth.
Where the heaven-chosen leaders sinned so grievously and long
That the Lord in righteous anger drowned them with the rabble throng.
Lo, the years by thousands vanished, till the past becomes the now,
And, as ever groans the farmer in the furrows of his plow,
And the toiler of the city, striving madly as he may,
Sees his famished wife and children growing gaunter day by day!
Shunned and driven forth forever by the haughty "upper class,"
Stung with insult and derision, hooted by the vulgar mass,
