I saw the Socialist sitting at a great Banquet of Men,
Sitting with honored leaders of the blind, unwitting Multitude;
I saw him there with the writers, editors, painters, men of letters,
Legislators and judges, the Leaders of the People,
Leaders flushed with the wines of price, eating costly and rare foods,
Making loud talk, and boastful, of that marvel, American Liberty!
Thinking were they no thought of hunger and pinching cold;
Of the blue-lipped, skinny children, the thin-chested, coughing men,
The dry-breasted mothers, the dirt, disease and ignorance,
The mangled workmen, the tramps, drunkards, pickpockets, prostitutes, thieves,
The mad-houses, jails, asylums and hospitals, the sores, the blood of war,
And all the other wondrous blessings that attend our civilization—
That civilization through which the wines and foods were given them.
I saw the Socialist there, calm, unmoved, unsmiling, thoughtful,
Sober, serious, full of dispassionate and prophetic vision,
Not like the other men, the all-wise Leaders of the People.
The political economists, the professors, the militarists, heroes and statisticians;
Not like the kings and presidents and emperors, the nobles and gold-crammed bankers,
But mindful, more than they, of the cellars under the House of Life
Where blind things crawl in the dark, things men and yet not human,
Things whose toil makes possible the Banquets of the Leaders of Men,
Things that live and yet are not alive; things that never taste of Life;
Things that make the rich foods, themselves snatching filthy crumbs;
Things that produce the wines of price, and must be content with lees;
Things that shiver and cringe and whine, that snarl sometimes,
That are men and women and children, and yet that know not Life!
I saw the Socialist there; I sat at the banquet; beside him,
Listened to the surging music, saw all the lights and flowers,
Flowers and lights and crystal cups, whereof the price for each
Might have brought back from Potter's Field some bloodless, starving baby.
I heard the Leaders' speeches, the turgid oratory,
The well-turned phrases of the Captains, the rotund babble of prosperity,
(Prosperity for whom? Nay, ask not troublesome questions!)
The Captains' vaunting I heard, their boasts of glory and victory,
While red, red, red their hands dripped red with the blood of the butchered workers.
I heard the Judges' self-glorification, Quixotic fighting of windmills,
Heard also the unclean jests that those respected Leaders told.
And as I looked and listened, I still observed the Socialist,
Unmoved and patient and serious, calm, full of sober reflections.
Then there spake (among many others) an honored and full-paunched Bishop.
Rubicund he was, and of portly habit of body,
Shepherd of a well-pastured flock, mightily content with God,
Out of whose omnipotent Hand (no doubt) the blessings of his life descended.
I heard this exponent of Christ the Crucified, Christ the Carpenter,
Christ the Leader of Workingmen, the Agitator, the Disturber,
Christ the Labor-organizer, Christ the Archetypal Socialist,
Friend of the dwellers in the pits of Life, Consoler of earth's exploited,
Who once with the lash scourged from the Temple the unclean graft-brood of usurers.
And the rotund Bishop's words were as the crackling of dry thorns
Under a pot, bubbling without use in the desert of dreary platitudes.
The story he told was spiced and garnished with profane words,
Whereat the Leaders laughed in their cups, making great show of merriment,
So that the banquet-hall rang, and wine was spilt on the linen.
Wine as red as blood—the blood of the shattered miner,
Blood of the boy in the rifle-pits, blood of the coughing child-slave,
Blood of the mangled trainman, blood that the Carpenter shed.
And still I watched the Socialist. Sober, judicial, observant
And full of greater wisdom he was than to laugh with the tipsy Leaders.
His eyes were fixed on the Bishop, vice-regent of God upon earth.
And as I watched the Socialist, the unmoved, the contemplative one,
He thoughtfully took his pencil, he took the fine and large card
Whereon the names of the rich foods and all the costly wines were printed,
And made a few notes of the feast, notes of the Bishop's speech,
Notes to remind him to search the slums for the great, God-given prosperity,
Which all the Judges, Lawmakers, Captains and Leaders knew to be "our" portion;
Notes of the flowers, the wine, the lights, the music, the splendor,
Notes of the Leaders' oratory, notes of the Bishop's deep-voiced unctiousness,
Notes he made; and as I looked at the notes he was carefully writing,
The words ran red like wine and blood, they blazed like the blazing lights!
Words they were of blood and fire, that spread, that filled the banquet-hall.
Words of old, I read them—"MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSHIN!—
Weighed in the Balance you are, ye Leaders respected of men,
You Statesmen, Lawmakers, Judges, Captains, Bishops, vice-regents of God!
Weighed and tried and found wanting. Give way, now, to what shall come after!
Make ye way for the Men who shall do what ye have but neglected and shirked!
Make ye way for a Time which hath more than Power and Greed for its watchwords!
Soon your day shall decline forever, your sun shall sink and shall vanish.
Then from the Cellars of Life the darkness-dwellers shall issue,
Greeting another daunt which shall have more than pain for its portion.
Then no more shall the humble, the lowly, the friends of the Nazarene Carpenter
Be starved, be mangled for gold, be crucified, slaughtered, bled.
Make ye way!...Make ye way!..."
Such was the message I read, the words of that fire-writ warning.
Then peace came back to my spirit, calm peace, and hope and patience:
Then, through my anger and heat, I thought of the Retribution.
But even more clearly I saw the New Birth of this weary world,
This world now groaning in chains, with the bloody sweat of oppression.
These things and many more, such as were hard to write of,
I read in the words of the Socialist, patient, peaceful and sober,
Full of prophetic vision, above all things hopeful and patient,
Written in living flame at the Feast of the Leaders of Men....