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Title: The Outlaws Of Our Country
Author: Edward Doyle [
More Titles by Doyle]
I
The outlaws in our country are the wretches,
Who wreck the legislatures with their gold,
And with the ruins, form a high stronghold
To sally from, to what good nature fetches
From God to man. What though fine graphic sketches
In magazines show them with shoulders bold
Against the nights flood-gates of dark and cold?
All effort is but life in death-throw stretches.
They are the outlaws, who stop Nature's train
And take its corn and coal for selfish use;
Then, put their shoulders to Night's gate, to loose
Its hinges for a forty-day dark rain,
To drown all life, that they, like Noah, may cruise
Through thick drifts of the dead in heart and brain.
II
O heart and brain, who see the father load
His train with food, not for the few, but all,
And hear train-whistlings in March winds, jay call
And ground-hog sniffs! Haste out, for from the road
That leads to every Industry's abode,
The trust that, bat-eyed, comes out at night-fall,
Now moves the tracks inside his private wall,
Claiming all trains from God a debt long owed.
O heart and brain, it rest with you, how long
The legislative wreckers shall prevail.
Ye have the power to balk them. Why then, fail?
Regain your legislatures. Man them strong
And drive thence all sleek hounds, trust-trained to trail
Safe outlaws' paths to fastnesses of wrong.
[The end]
Edward Doyle's poem: Outlaws Of Our Country
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