EMPIRE BUILDING
Somehow I never liked you, John, your ways were crude:
Your smile was pharisaical, your manners rude;
Although you prospered well in worldly things,
Ay, were on nodding terms with Czars and Kings,
I seem to see the counter and the store,
And all the shopman's manners learnt before
You donned the regal robes of finer folk,
And in your brain the strong desire awoke
To play the master where you were the man,—
Plain Hodge, make blue the plebeian blood that ran
To warm the grocer of those early days,
Who sanded sugar and who mixed his tea
Before he bowed in Sunday sanctity,
With that lank Scotsman who your partner was.
Ah, no, I never liked you, John, because
You were a braggart and a pharisee,
Held many slaves, yet prated “Liberty.”
50
