POETRY: A Magazine of Verse
And the city had a legion
Of men who make a business of religion—
With eyes one inch apart,
Dark and narrow of heart—
Who give themselves and give the city no peace,
And who are everywhere the best police
For Life as business.
And when they saw this youth
Was telling the truth
And that his followers were multiplying,
And were going about rejoicing and defying
The social order, and were stirring up
The dregs of discontent in the cup
With the hand of their own happiness,
They saw dynamic mysteries
In the poems of lilies and trees:
Therefore they held him for a felony.
If you will take a kernel of wheat
And first make free
The outer flake, and then pare off the meat
Of edible starch, you'll find at the kernel's core
The life germ. And this young man's words were dim
With blasphemy, sedition at the rim,
Which fired the heads of dreamers like new wine.
But this was just the outward force of him
For this young man's philosophy was more
Than such external ferment, being divine
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