Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DOLLARES; OUR LADY OF THE WHEAT-CORNER (AFTER A.C.S.), by PHILIP GUEDALLA


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DOLLARES; OUR LADY OF THE WHEAT-CORNER (AFTER A.C.S.), by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The heavy white shafts and the golden
Last Line: Our lady of gain.
Subject(s): Materialism; Oxford University; Swinburne, Algernon Charles (1837-1909); United States; America


THE heavy white shafts and the golden
Carved capitals gleaming above
In American Bars, that embolden
A man to the liquors of love --
Here, here where the markets are flighty
With crapulous corners in grain,
Even here thou abidest, Almighty
Dollares, Our Lady of Gain.

In the halls that the Harriman harried,
In the Morgue of Morganic commands
Where the maidens are made that are married
To the Lords of unlimited lands,
Out here in the place of the Panic,
Where failures are frequent as rain,
Thou art here, O tremendous, Titanic
Dollares, Our Lady of Gain.

Crops fail, and rates rise, as a rocket
Runs red up the rim of the night;
And one buys from a bottomless pocket
The pale proletariat's bite.
Thou art fair on a perilous Patten,
Thou art mobile and cute as an elf,
But this time thou art shent and a flat un,
As the Corner that cornered itself.

Out of Michigan heavily freighted
Came corn that eluded thy ken,
Got and garnered by foemen that hated
Thy rule o'er the children of men, --
Operators in haunts unbeholden,
Who dream of the end of their care,
When lion with lamb shall be folden,
The bull with the bear.

When the plaster is utterly shattered,
And Paris is perished and past,
When the singers of snatches are scattered,
And the colours are fallen from the mast,
We shall see whether bulls become bears then,
If the wheat-pit is pleasure or pain,
We shall sever the wheat from the tares then,
Our Lady of Gain.





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