Masters, Edgar Lee: Spoon River Anthology - 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.