Hence, crime on crime.
Yea, if the Christ (called thine) now paced yon street,
Thy halfness hot with his rebuke would swell;
Legions of scribes would rise and run and beat
His fair intolerable Wholeness twice to hell."*
--
* `Acknowledgment', ll. 1-12.
--
More hurtful than agnosticism, because affecting larger masses of people,
is the rapid growth of the mercantile spirit during the present century,
especially in America. This evil the poet saw most clearly
and felt most keenly, as every one may learn by reading `The Symphony',
his great poem in which the speakers are the various musical instruments.
The violins begin:
"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!
The Time needs heart -- 'tis tired of head."*
Then all the stringed instruments join with the violins in giving
the wail of the poor, who "stand wedged by the pressing of Trade's hand":
"`We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns,
We sieve mine-meshes under the hills,
And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills,
To relieve, O God, what manner of ills? --
The beasts, they hunger, and eat, and die;
And so do we, and the world's a sty;
Hush, fellow-swine: why nuzzle and cry?
"Swinehood hath no remedy"
Say many men, and hasten by,
Clamping the nose and blinking the eye.
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