There were other dead around me with a slab to mark
When they heaped the final pillow for my honor’s meed.
Now the lovers stopping curiously in Lincoln Park
Look at the bronze tablet on my boulder and read:
How I fought at Long Island and fought at White Plains—
What does it mean you lovers who scan what is scored
On the tablet on my boulder?—Why the task remains
To make the torch brighter and to keep clean the sword.
Go labor for the future. Go make the cities great:
There are other realms to conquer for the men to be.
For it’s toil and it’s courage that solve a soul’s fate,
And it’s giving and living that make a people free!
V
HANGING THE PICTURE
Before you pull that string,
And strip away that veil,
I rise to enter my objection
To the hanging of Archer Price’s picture
Here in this hall....
For I’ll venture the artist has tried to soften
The vain and shifty look of the eyes;
And the face that looked like a harte-beest’s,
And the rabbit mouth that looked like a horse’s,
Lipping oats from a leather bag!
I knew this man in ’28
When he drifted here from Maine, he said.
And now it’s eighteen ninety two:
This year is sacred to conquerors,
Discoverers and soldiers.
And I object to the hanging of pictures
Of men who trade while others fight,
And follow the army to get the loot,
And rest till other men are tired,
Then grab the spoils while the workers sleep.
I would like to burn all masks,
And padded shoes,
And smash all dark lanterns.
And take all friends of the people
And brand them with the letter “B,”
Which means “Betrayer.”
And I would like to enter the Kingdom of Heaven
Just to see the publicans who will be there,
And the Archer Prices who will not be there!
You call him a great man,
And a prophetic man,
And a leader, and a savior,
And a man who was wise in an evil world
Of tangled interests and selfish power,
And who knew the art of compromise,
And how to get half when you can’t get all!
You haven’t probed deep enough in this man.
For he was great as the condor is great.
And prophetic as the wolf is prophetic.
And a leader as the jackal is a leader.
And his wisdom was that of the python,
Which will swallow a hare when no pig is at hand!
He was rich,
He was well known,
His name was linked with lofty things,
And adorned all noble committees.
And he was a friend of art and music—
He gave them money!
He was on the Library Board,
And the Commerce Board, and every board
For building up the city—
I admit these things. They were pawns on the board for him.
That’s why I rise to enter my objection
To hanging his picture here!
We had no telephones in those days.
But there was a certain man of power,
A man who was feared, as one might fear
A lion that hides in the jungle.
And this man sat in a hidden room
As a banded-epira waits and watches.
And he went from this room to his house in a cab,
And back to this room in a cab.
But everyone knew that Archer Price
Was doing the will of the man in the room,
Though you never saw the two together,
As you never could see together the leaders
Of some of these late bi-partisan deals.
But Archer Price was so much alike
This secret man in the room;
And did so much what we knew
He wanted done, and built the city
So near to the heart’s desire of this man
That all of us knew that the two conferred
In spite of the fact that telephones
Had never been heard of then....
Well, because of this man in the room,
As well as because of Price himself,
Everyone feared him, no one knew
Exactly how to fight him.
Everyone hated him, although
Everyone helped him to wealth and power.
He was what you’d call a touch-me-not.
If you clodded him you ran the risk
Of hitting the teacher, or maybe a child.
He always walked with the wind to his back:
If you spit at him it would fly in your face.
And though we suspected more than we knew
Of his subtle machinations,
No one could attack him for what was known.
Because the things he was known to be doing
Were service to those, who couldn’t allow
The service to be imperiled.