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.