Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968).
The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915. | | | The New State
(From the “Panama-Pacific Ode”) |
By George Sterling |
(California poet, born 1869) |
| | | O DARK and cruel State, | |
| Whose towers are altars unto self alone,— | |
| Whose streets with tears are wet, | |
| And half thy councils given unto hate! | |
| Shall Time not hurl thy temples stone from stone, | 5 |
| And o’er the ruin set | |
| A fairer city than the years have known? | |
| Out of thy darkness do we find us dreams, | |
| And on the future gleams | |
| The vision of thy ramparts built anew. | 10 |
| Mammon and War sit now a double throne, | |
| Yet what we dream, a wiser Age shall do. | |
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| Be ye lift up, O everlasting gates | |
| Of that far City men shall build for man! | |
| O fairer Day that waits, | 15 |
| The splendor of whose dawn we shall not see, | |
| When selfish bonds of family and clan | |
| Melt in the higher love that yet shall be! | |
| O State without a master or a slave, | |
| Whose law of light we crave | 20 |
| Ere morning widen on a world set free! | | | | |
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