Part 12 (2/2)

Life is phony! Life is rotten!

And the wealthy have no soul; Why should you be picking cotton?

Why should I be mining coal?

Not employment and not sorrow Is my destined end or way; But to act that each to-morrow Finds me idler than to-day.

Work is long, and plutes are lunching; Money is the thing I crave; But my heart continues punching Funeral time-clocks to the grave.

In the world's uneven battle, In the swindle known as life, Be not like the stockyards cattle-- Stick your partner with a knife!

Trust no Boss, however pleasant!

Capital is but a curse!

Strike,--strike in the living present!

Fill, oh fill, the bulging purse!

Lives of strikers all remind us We can make our lives a crime, And, departing, leave behind us Bills for double overtime.

Charges that, perhaps another, Working for a stingy ten Bucks a day, some mining brother Seeing, shall walk out again.

Let us, then, be up and striking, Discontent with all of it; Still undoing, still disliking, Learn to labour--and to quit.

Ballade of Ancient Acts

AFTER HENLEY

Where are the wheezes they essayed And where the smiles they made to flow?

Where's Caron's seltzer siphon laid, A squirt from which laid Herbert low?

Where's Charlie Case's comic woe And Georgie Cohan's nasal drawl?

The afterpiece? The olio?

Into the night go one and all.

Where are the j.a.peries, fresh or frayed, That Fields and Lewis used to throw?

Where is the horn that Shepherd played?

The slide trombone that Wood would blow?

Amelia Glover's l. f. toe?

The Rays and their domestic brawl?

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