Shapes of Clay

Must you, Carnegie, evermore explain

Your worth, and all the reasons give again

Why black and red are similarly white,

And you and God identically right?

Still must our ears without redress submit

To hear you play the solemn hypocrite

Walking in spirit some high moral level,

Raising at once his eye-balls and the devil?

Great King of Cant! if Nature had but made

Your mouth without a tongue I ne'er had prayed

To have an earless head. Since she did not,

Bear me, ye whirlwinds, to some favored spot—

Some mountain pinnacle that sleeps in air

So delicately, mercifully rare

That when the fellow climbs that giddy hill,

As, for my sins, I know at last he will,

To utter twaddle in that void inane

His soundless organ he will play in vain.