But what if they stood aside,
Who hold the earth so careless in the crook of their arms?
What of the flamboyant cities
And the lights guttering out like candles in a wind…
And the armies halted…
And the train mid-way on the mountain
And idle men chaffing across the trenches…
And the cursing and lamentation
And the clamor for grain shut in the mills of the world?
What if they stayed apart,
Inscrutably smiling,
Leaving the ground encumbered with dead wire
And the sea to row-boats
And the lands marooned—
Till Time should like a paralytic sit,
A mildewed hulk above the nations squatting?
FUEL
What of the silence of the keys
And silvery hands? The iron sings…
Though bows lie broken on the strings,
The fly-wheels turn eternally…
Bring fuel—drive the fires high…
Throw all this artist-lumber in
And foolish dreams of making things…
(Ten million men are called to die.)
As for the common men apart,
Who sweat to keep their common breath,
And have no hour for books or art—
What dreams have these to hide from death!
A TOAST
Not your martyrs anointed of heaven—
The ages are red where they trod—
But the Hunted—the world's bitter leaven—
Who smote at your imbecile God—
A being to pander and fawn to,
To propitiate, flatter and dread
As a thing that your souls are in pawn to,
A Dealer who traffics the dead;
A Trader with greed never sated,
Who barters the souls in his snares,
That were trapped in the lusts he created,
For incense and masses and prayers—