Henry Phipps

I was the Sunday-school superintendent,         The dummy president of the wagon works         And the canning factory,         Acting for Thomas Rhodes and the banking clique;         My son the cashier of the bank,         Wedded to Rhodes, daughter,         My week days spent in making money,         My Sundays at church and in prayer.         In everything a cog in the wheel of things - as - they-are:         Of money, master and man, made white         With the paint of the Christian creed.         And then:         The bank collapsed.         I stood and hooked at the wrecked machine -         The wheels with blow-holes stopped with putty and painted;         The rotten bolts, the broken rods;         And only the hopper for souls fit to be used again         In a new devourer of life,         When newspapers, judges and money-magicians         Build over again.         I was stripped to the bone, but I lay in the Rock of Ages,         Seeing now through the game, no longer a dupe,         And knowing "'the upright shall dwell in the land         But the years of the wicked shall be shortened."         Then suddenly, Dr. Meyers discovered         A cancer in my liver.         I was not, after all, the particular care of God         Why, even thus standing on a peak         Above the mists through which I had climbed,         And ready for larger life in the world,         Eternal forces         Moved me on with a push.