| I HEARD one who said: “Verily, | |
| What word have I for children here? | |
| Your Dollar is your only Word, | |
| The wrath of it your only fear. | |
| |
| “You build it altars tall enough | 5 |
| To make you see, but you are blind; | |
| You cannot leave it long enough | |
| To look before you or behind. | |
| |
| “When Reason beckons you to pause, | |
| You laugh and say that you know best; | 10 |
| But what it is you know, you keep | |
| As dark as ingots in a chest. | |
| |
| “You laugh and answer, ‘We are young; | |
| O leave us now, and let us grow.’— | |
| Not asking how much more of this | 15 |
| Will Time endure or Fate bestow. | |
| |
| “Because a few complacent years | |
| Have made your peril of your pride, | |
| Think you that you are to go on | |
| Forever pampered and untried? | 20 |
| |
| “What lost eclipse of history, | |
| What bivouac of the marching stars, | |
| Has given the sign for you to see | |
| Millenniums and last great wars? | |
| |
| “What unrecorded overthrow | 25 |
| Of all the world has ever known, | |
| Or ever been, has made itself | |
| So plain to you, and you alone? | |
| |
| “Your Dollar, Dove and Eagle make | |
| A Trinity that even you | 30 |
| Rate higher than you rate yourselves; | |
| It pays, it flatters, and it’s new. | |
| |
| “And though your very flesh and blood | |
| Be what your Eagle eats and drinks, | |
| You’ll praise him for the best of birds, | 35 |
| Not knowing what the Eagle thinks. | |
| |
| “The power is yours, but not the sight; | |
| You see not upon what you tread; | |
| You have the ages for your guide, | |
| But not the wisdom to be led. | 40 |
| |
| “Think you to tread forever down | |
| The merciless old verities? | |
| And are you never to have eyes | |
| To see the world for what it is? | |
| |
| “Are you to pay for what you have | 45 |
| With all you are?”—No other word | |
| We caught, but with a laughing crowd | |
| Moved on. None heeded, and few heard. | |
