Pocahontas and Other Poems (New York)/Love of Wealth
LOVE OF WEALTH.
O earth! thou gorged and mighty sepulchre!
How find'st thou room for all the born of clay,
From him, the sire of Eden, to the babe
That gasps this hour?
Why need we join the race
For shadows on thy surface? hastening on
Ourselves like shadows, to the common home
That waits the dead.
What boots a broad domain,
A lordly heritage, for which are feuds,
Heart-burnings, and, perchance, a brother's blood?
—Show me the face, upon thy country's map,
Of that estate which lust hath coveted
And fraud obtain'd. Show me its waving trees,
Its pleasant hillocks, and its corn-clad vales.
Thou canst not! Boast they not one narrow space
Upon the picture? Yet for this a soul
Hath lost its place in Heaven!
And shall we throw
Love, truth, and conscience in the ill-poised scale,
Bidding some little modicum of gold
Outweigh them all?
I thought that I had read
There was a judgment, where the deeds of men
Met just reward. But they who lightly look
Upon the shifting face of things, might deem
God's page of truth reversed, and that the gain
Of wealth was what the denizens of earth
Did chiefly toil and strive for, and the words
"Get rich" had been sole passport to heaven's gate.