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William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.

A Republic!

HER faith abandoned and her place despised,

Her mission lost through ridicule, hooted forth

From the forum she erected, by cat calls,

And tory sneers and schemes. Her basic law.

Scoffed out of court, amended at the need

Of stomachology by the judges, or

A majority of States, as it is said—

Rather by drunks and grafters, for the time

The spokesmen of the States, coerced and scared

By Methodists with a fund to hire spies,

And unearth women scrapes, or other sins

With which to say: Vote dry, or be exposed.

A marsh Atlantis drifting, towed at last

By pirates into harbor, made a pasture

For alien hatreds, greeds. A shackled press,

And voices gagged, creative spirits frozen,

Obtunded by disgust or fear. War only,

Armies and navies speak the national mind,

And make it move as a man; for other things

Resistance, thought divided, ostracism,

Or jail for their protagonists. At the mast

The cross above the cross-bones, in between

The starry banner. A people hatched like chickens:

Of feeble spirit for much inter-crossing,

Without vision and without will, incapable

Of lusty revolution whatever right

Is spit upon or taken. A wriggling mass

Bemused and babbling, trampling private right

As a tyrant tramples it, calling it law

Because it speaks the majority of the mob.

A land that breeds the reformer, the infuriate

Will in the shallow mind, the plague of frogs

That hop into our rooms at Pharaoh’s will,

And spoil our banquet dishes, hour of joy.

A giantess growing huger, duller of mind,

Her gland pituitary being injured!

The Nation