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