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Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968). rn The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.

Man as God
(From “A Ballad in Blank Verse”)

Davidson, John

John Davidson

(Scotch poet and dramatist, 1857–1909; after struggling for many years in London against poverty and ill-health, committed suicide, leaving some of the most striking and original poetry of the present age)

HOW vain! he cried. A God? a mole, a worm!

An engine frail, of brittle bones conjoined;

With tissue packed; with nerves, transmitting force;

And driven by water, thick and coloured red:

That may for some few pence a day be hired

In thousands to be shot at! Oh, a God,

That lies and steals and murders! Such a God

Passionate, dissolute, incontinent!

A God that starves in thousands, and ashamed,

Or shameless in the workhouse lurks; that sweats

In mines and foundries! An enchanted God,

Whose nostrils in a palace breathe perfume,

Whose cracking shoulders hold the palace up,

Whose shoeless feet are rotting in the mire!