The Day

The Day

The day was when kings owned men.

They owned their bodies, minds, their very souls;

And with their arch-conspirators,

The hireling priests of Babylon,

They toyed with them as lions do their prey.

Men felt no finer self, hopeless, faithless, lost,

Their forces blindly driven by the rod of tyrants.

Liberty, a passion crushed to muteness;

They were mere chattels to their lords, and slaves unto themselves.

Pleasure was found alone in orgies wild:

The horn of mead, the roasted flesh, the filthy jest, the theft of virtue, the

bloody field!

And God on high looked down in awful grief;

Grieved? O yes; but changeless in his course

He touched the holy fire — the fire of Freedom,

That makes of humans — Men.

Chattanooga, Tenn. Frank C. Steele.