Chapter II

What! in the darkness lowers boat after boat
From Freedom's fleet, and each with lightening oars?
Treasons to God and country are the rowers.
They are the Gold and Hireling Brain, that gloat
On conscience body with face down, afloat.
Why hail they Greed, to run on menial chores
From deck to deck, or to and from all shores?
Why? To ensure the payment of a note.

Meanwhile, brisk Freedom's fleets with justice manned,
And cosmic full momentum for their speed,
Confront the crafts, fired up by fiendish Greed.
A clash and--lo! they pass the strait and land,
Leaving in smoldering heaps, like autumn's weed,
The hulks of thrall along time's vultured strand.

REPTILES WITH WINGS

Are lust for Gold and Power not hideous spawn
Of prehistoric reptiles, that had wings?
Where e'er those crawled, they chawed all greening things
And, when they mounted, how their lengths, full drawn,
Basked barren in the sun before the dawn,
Absorbing all its rays from budding Springs?
These drain life's dawn and by impoverishings,
Draw and reduce to pulp, frail Consciences.

Oh, yea, bewinged with legislative crime,
They bask in sunlight e'er the east sky greys,
And drag the soul of man from God's embrace
Of rights and freedom. Oh, how long a time
Shall reptiles, deadly to the Human race,
Be let grow wings and heavenward trail their slime?

THE OUTLAWS OF OUR COUNTRY

I

The outlaws in our country are the wretches,
Who wreck the legislatures with their gold,
And with the ruins, form a high stronghold
To sally from, to what good nature fetches
From God to man. What though fine graphic sketches
In magazines show them with shoulders bold
Against the nights flood-gates of dark and cold?
All effort is but life in death-throw stretches.

They are the outlaws, who stop Nature's train
And take its corn and coal for selfish use;
Then, put their shoulders to Night's gate, to loose
Its hinges for a forty-day dark rain,
To drown all life, that they, like Noah, may cruise
Through thick drifts of the dead in heart and brain.