CHICAGO MAY
‘That sets all loathing tingling through my spine,
This hate, hate, hate of this “ good luck” of mine!
ag
Good luck! God save us! Is there one thing worth
Gold buys? You bought love; here's the goods!
For health,
Look at the ploughman toiling in the earth !
Disease and hatred won you by your wealth,
‘And scorn—foul scorn—even from the tipsy knaves
‘You fling your dollars to, and think them slaves!
Each one of all the maggots that swarm round
‘Your swollen carcass knows exactly that;
What is too rotten, what is fairly sound,
‘How much is flesh, and how much more is fat.
Not one thinks otherwise than “ Here is meat:
God sends His maggots carrion to eat.”
Not one conceives you otherwise. And you,
Do you think otherwise? I sometimes feel
There is some consciousness keeps peering through
Your bat's-eyes, as a soul in hell might steal
To the edge of the abyss that bars salvation,
And glare its knowledge of its own damnation.
v
Is it for this you gorge and swill—to mask
That death’s-head? In the senses drown all sense?
For this that love's a toil, a trade, a task,
A labour Hercules might call immense?