This is the hectic creed of the years,
The damning lie that parents preach
To ease their conscience of the blame
For higher goals they failed to reach.
Immune, these sowers of wild-oat tares?
There's never a single garnered field
Where sickles of sorrow have cut their swarths
But tells its tale of a misery yield.
The damning lie that parents preach
To ease their conscience of the blame
For higher goals they failed to reach.
Immune, these sowers of wild-oat tares?
There's never a single garnered field
Where sickles of sorrow have cut their swarths
But tells its tale of a misery yield.
Go, look in the wards where the maniacs rave,
Their brain cells brimmed with liquid fire
Through mad misrule of uncurbed wills
Or the blight of a foul desire.
And count, if you can, the blameless hosts—
The waifs unfathered and unnamed—
Who, under the light of God's blue sky,
Must live their cheated lives ashamed.
Their brain cells brimmed with liquid fire
Through mad misrule of uncurbed wills
Or the blight of a foul desire.
And count, if you can, the blameless hosts—
The waifs unfathered and unnamed—
Who, under the light of God's blue sky,
Must live their cheated lives ashamed.
And, ah! the "drunks* and the derelicts
Lined day by day at the judge's bar,
And the man who limps on a shriveled limb—
A horrible, visible moral scar!
And the frightened girl with her shame revealed
Leaping down where the moonbeams quiver,
Her epitaph but the scornful line:
"A floater dragged from the river."
Lined day by day at the judge's bar,
And the man who limps on a shriveled limb—
A horrible, visible moral scar!
And the frightened girl with her shame revealed
Leaping down where the moonbeams quiver,
Her epitaph but the scornful line:
"A floater dragged from the river."
And the men hard-lipped and filled with fear
As they slip from the doctor's door.
Hiding his verdict of loathsome taint—
(Oh, the wives who must pay THAT score!)
As they slip from the doctor's door.
Hiding his verdict of loathsome taint—
(Oh, the wives who must pay THAT score!)
75
