Edgar Lee Masters - Henry Phipps lyrics

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.