TRUTH: Caskets of steel for the jewels which Civilization carefully polishes.
POET: The jail-smell,
Sickening, covered up with drugs. As a corpse in the sun covered with lime. And its heart the windowless chamber where deserted
men are strangled. O for the pure breath of the redolent meadows.
TRUTH: Look not to your churches ; the jails are the pulse of your
sickness. The dwellers know not the aroma of the calm-giving
forest. They have never seen Where feathery-ferns are rooted, spreading their plumes And mosses enamel the trees with voluptuous green. They have never smelled the salt of the sea nor the spice
of the mountains, nor kissed the lips of a dryad or
loafed on the breast of the Mother. Faces sallow with jail-pallor, melancholy, hopeless,
helpless. Pressed against the iron bars of despair.
POET: Cages for the rats of Society's fetid cellars. The dull-eyed little beetles in their cages, And the keen-eyed birds of prey in their cages. Yet the greater falcons are not here. The eagles know not the jail ; Here are the law-breakers, but where be the law-makers?
TRUTH: How overcrowded with the Rich were the jails, If jails were a place for loafers.
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