other-love.
Go forth into the forest and observe--
For men believe their eyes and doubt their ears--
The creeping vine, the shrub, the lowly bush,
The dwarfed and stunted trees, the bent and bowed,
And here and there a lordly oak or elm,
And o'er them all a tall and princely pine.
All struggle upward, but the many fail;
The low dwarfed by the shadows of the great,
The stronger basking in the genial sun.
Observe the myriad fishes of the seas--
The mammoths and the minnows of the deep.
Behold the eagle and the little wren,
The condor on his cliff, the pigeon-hawk,
The teal, the coot, the broad-winged albatross.
Turn to the beasts in forest and in field--
The lion, the lynx, the mammoth and the mouse,
The sheep, the goat, the bullock and the horse,
The fierce gorillas and the chattering apes--
Progenitors and prototypes of man.
Not only differences in genera find,
But grades in every kind and every class.
I would not doom to serfdom or to toil
One race, one caste, one class, or any man:
Give every honest man an honest chance;
Protect alike the rich man and the poor;
Let not the toiler live upon a crust
While Croesus' bread is buttered on both sides.
O people's king and shepherd, throned Law,
Strike down the monsters of Monopoly.
Lift up thy club, O mighty Hercules!
Behold thy "Labors" yet unfinished are:
Tear off thy Nessus shirt and bare thine arms.
The Numean lion fattens on our flocks;
The Lernean Hydra coils around our farms,
Our towns, our mills, our mines, our factories;
The triple monster Geryon lives again,
Grown quadruple, and over all our plains
And thousand hills his fattening oxen feed.
Stymphalean buzzards ravage round our fields;
The Augean stables reeking stench the land;
The hundred-headed monster Cerberus,
That throttled Greece and ravaged hapless France,
Hath broke from hell and howls for human blood.
Lift up thy knotted club, O Hercules!
Strike swift and sure: crush down the Hydra's heads;
Throttle the Numean lion: strike! nor spare
The monster Geryon or the buzzard-beaks.
Clean the Augean stables if thou can'st;
But hurl the hundred-headed monster down
Headlong to Hades: chain him; make thee sure
He shall not burst the bonds of hell again.
To you, O chosen makers of the laws,
The nation looks--and shall it look in vain?
Will ye sit idle, or in idle wind
Blow out your zeal, and crack your party whips,
Or drivel dotage, while the crisis cries--
While all around the dark horizon l
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