THE CHRISTIAN STATESMAN
He hears his father pray when he's a boy:
"Jesus we know, the Savior, and we ask,
In Thy great plenitude of mercy, grace,
Forgiveness for our waywardness; we invoke
Thy blessing, and may righteousness and peace
Prevail in all the earth. Meekly we rest
Upon the precious promise of Thy word.
Gather us home with Thine own people, Lord,
And all the glory shall be Thine."
So much
To show the father's prayer which he heard.
The father is a saint, a quietist,
Save that he has his hatreds, strong enough:
Turns face of stone and silence to the men
Whose ways of life are laid in sin, he thinks
And calls them dirty dogs and scalawags,
Because they vote a ticket he dislikes,
Or love a game of cards, a glass of beer,
Or go to see the County Fair, where once
A drunken bus-man drives upon a boy
And kills him. Then the saint is all aflame,
And tries to have the fair put out for good.
And so the son, who will become at last
The Christian Statesman, hears his father pray,
And prays himself, and takes the lesson in
Of godliness, the Bible as the source
Of truth infallible, divine.
This boy
Is blessed with health, a body without flaw,
His forehead is a little low, perhaps,
And has a transverse dent which keeps the brain
Shaped to the skull; a perfect brain is sphered,
As perfect things are circles; but a brain
Something below perfection, which is fed
By a great body and an obdurate will,
And sense of moral purpose will go far,
Farther than better brains in craft of states,
For some years anyway, if a voice be given
Which reaches to the largest crowded room,
To speak the passionate moralities
Which come into that brain creased straight across
The forehead with a dent.
He goes to school,
And from the first believes he has a mission
To make the world a better place, avows
His mission in the world, bends all his strength
To make his armor ready: health of body,
A blameless life, hard studies, practices
With word and voice.
It is a country college
Where he matriculates—the father wished it;
A college where the boys are mostly poor,
And waste no time, have not the cash to buy
Delight, if they desired.
He ruminates
Upon the pebbles and Demosthenes,
And sets his will to be an orator
That he may herald truth and save the world.
After much toil, re-writing, he delivers
A speech he calls, "Ich Dien," and loses out
Against a youth who speaks on Liberty.
And then he uses Gladstone for his theme,
The Christian Statesman; for exordium
Tells of the ermine which will die before
It suffers soilure—that was Gladstone—yes!
But still he cannot win the prize; a boy
Who talks about the labors of Charles Darwin,
His suffering and sacrifice, is awarded
The prize this time—a boy who had the wit
To speak in praise of Darwin's virtues—saying
Nothing about his hellish doctrines, thus
Winning the cautious judges to his theme.
But is our little Gladstone crushed, dismayed?
He plucks up further strength and takes a hint:
A larger subject may bring down the prize.
He thinks of Thomas Jefferson—but then
Jefferson was a deist, took the Bible
And cut out everything but Jesus' words.
"Yet I can speak on what was good in him,
His work for liberty, the Declaration,
And close my eyes to all his heterodoxy."
Then something of this plan crept like a snake
Into his brain, he petted it with hands:
Be ye as wise as serpents, and as doves
Harmless, he smiled—and went to work again,
And won the prize.
And now he has stepped forth
Into the world's arena to become
A Savior, an evangel, as he thinks,
In truth a pest. He runs for Congress first
And when his manager takes out a check
And shows him, given by the local brewery,
Another check a bank gives, he maintains
A smiling silence, thinking to himself,
Jesus accepted gifts from publicans,
And if I am elected then this money,
However dirty, will be purified
By what I do.
But then he was defeated.
He thinks the banks and breweries did the trick.
In truth they knew the Christian Statesman, knew
The oleaginous smile and silver voice
Concealed the despot. Did he scourge them then?
Well, scarcely then—he wrote a public letter
And said the people had decided it.
And what the people said was law. He nerved
His purpose for another trial—that body
So big and flawless could not be exhausted—
That voice still carried to the farthest corner,
That oily smile deceived the multitude
That he was hurt, embittered, only waited
To see if body, voice and oily smile
Could win by any means; if not, the scourge
Would be brought forth, the smile dropped, the complaints
Against the breweries, what not, opened up,
Unmasked. For when your hope is gone, you're free
To scold and tell your bitterness.
And then
He made a third and last attempt, though edging
Toward the sophistry that moral questions
Make those political, and by this means
Trying to win the churches. Still he stuck
To matters economic, as before
Took what the breweries gave to help his cause,
His campaign fund. By this time many more
Had found him out, and knew him for a voice
And tireless body nourishing a brain
As mediocre as the world contained,
And only making louder noise because
Of body strong and voice mellifluous.
They put him down for good: the Christian Statesman
Had cause to think he was no statesman, or
No Christian, or the electorate not Christian.
And so he took the mask off, dropped the smile,
And let his mouth set like a concrete crack
And went about to punish men, while seeming
To save the world.
Out of that indentation,
That fosse of mediocrity, came up
A crocodile with wagging tail upreared,
And smile toothed to the gullet—it was this:
Questions political are moral questions,
And moral questions are political,
And terms convertible are equipollent,
And wholly true. Therefore, I rise to preach
To moral America, draw audiences
In churches, of the churches. If I win
Majorities upon—no matter what—
A law will blossom; as all moral questions
Are equally political, procure
For their adoption the majority.
Upon this fortress I can stand and shoot—
Who can attack me, since I seek for self
Nothing, but for my country righteousness?
And as an instrument of God I punish
My enemies as well.
Who are my enemies?
The intelligencia, as they call themselves,
Who flaunt the Bible wholly or in part,
Or try to say that Darwin's evolution
Honors the Deity more than Genesis.
Who are my enemies? The thinkers, yes,
The strivers for a higher culture, yes,
The scorners of old fashioned ways, the things
Really American!—I know the crowd—
That smart minority I overwhelm,
Blot out, drown out, by massing under me
The great majority, the common folk,
Believers in the Bible—first for them!
And on the way the vile saloon I crush,
The abominable brewery—then I take away
From banqueters and diners, diners out,
The seekers after happiness, not God,
The cocktail and the wine they love so well.
This is a moral question, being so
Is also a political—the majority
Can do what they desire. I am consistent,
For from the first I've preached the people's rule,
Abided by the people's voice and taken
Defeat with grace because the people gave it.
So now I say the people have the right
To pass upon all questions. As I said
When starting as a public man, the people
Could have what Government they desired, in fact
A King, or despotism, if they voted for it.
For all this talk of rights, or realms of right,
Or individual preferences, beliefs
And courses in the world is swallowed up
By right of the majority—the serpent
Of Moses, so to speak, which swallowed up
All other serpents.
If he thought so much
The Christian Statesman thought this way—at least
He acted out a part which seemed to say
He analyzed so far. He went to work
To make his country just a despotism
Not governed by a King, but by the people
Laying the hand of law on everything
Most intimate and private, having thought
For moral aspects, as all politics
Are moral in their essence, to repeat.
Did not the Christian Statesman have revenge
In building his theocracy, who saw
All bills of right and fruit of revolution
Ground into mortar, made into a throne
For Demos?
And behold King Demos now!
A slouch hat for a crown upon his brow,
Stuffed full of bacon and of apple pie,
The Christian Statesman leaning on his shoulder
A tableau of familiarity.
The Christian Statesman having lost his hair
Betrays the Midas ears—the oily smile
Beams on the republic he has overthrown!