Chapter VI

Where is McKinley, that respectable McKinley,
The man without an angle or a tangle,
Who soothed down the city man and soothed down the farmer,
The German, the Irish, the Southerner, the Northerner,
Who climbed every greasy pole, and slipped through every crack;
Who soothed down the gambling hall, the bar-room, the church,
The devil vote, the angel vote, the neutral vote,
The desperately wicked, and their victims on the rack,
The gold vote, the silver vote, the brass vote, the lead vote,
Every vote....

Where is McKinley, Mark Hanna’s McKinley,
His slave, his echo, his suit of clothes?
Gone to join the shadows, with the pomps of that time,
And the flame of that summer’s prairie rose.

Where is Cleveland whom the Democratic platform
Read from the party in a glorious hour?
Gone to join the shadows with pitchfork Tillman,
And sledge-hammer Altgeld who wrecked his power.

Where is Hanna, bull dog Hanna,
Low browed Hanna, who said: “Stand pat”?
Gone to his place with old Pierpont Morgan.
Gone somewhere ... with lean rat Platt.

Where is Roosevelt, the young dude cowboy,
Who hated Bryan, then aped his way?
Gone to join the shadows with mighty Cromwell
And tall King Saul, till the Judgment day.

Where is Altgeld, brave as the truth,
Whose name the few still say with tears?
Gone to join the ironies with Old John Brown,
Whose fame rings loud for a thousand years.

Where is that boy, that Heaven-born Bryan,
That Homer Bryan, who sang from the West?
Gone to join the shadows with Altgeld the Eagle,
Where the kings and the slaves and the troubadours rest.

Written at the Guanella Ranch, Empire, Colorado, August, 1919.

RAMESES II

Would that the brave Rameses, King of Time
Were throned in your souls, to raise for you
Vast immemorial dreams dark Egypt knew,
Filling these barren days with Mystery,
With Life and Death, and Immortality,
The Devouring Ages, the all-consuming Sun:
God keep us brooding on eternal things,
God make us wizard-kings.

MOSES

Yet let us raise that Egypt-nurtured prince,
Son of a Hebrew, with the dauntless scorn
And hate for bleating gods Egyptian-born,
Showing with signs to stubborn Mizraim
“God is one God, the God of Abraham,”
He who in the beginning made the Sun.
God send us Moses from his hidden grave,
God make us meek and brave.

A RHYME FOR ALL ZIONISTS

_The Eyes of Queen Esther, and How they Conquered King
Ahasuerus_

“Esther had not showed her people nor her kindred.”

I

He harried lions up the peaks.
In blood and moss and snow they died.
He wore a cloak of lions’ manes
To satisfy his curious pride.
Men saw it, trimmed with emerald bands,
Flash on the crested battle-tide.

Where Bagdad stands, he hunted kings,
Burned them alive, his soul to cool.
Yet in his veins god Ormadz wrought
To make a just man of a fool.
He spoke the rigid truth, and rode,
And drew the bow, by Persian rule.