Full encumbered with our treasure,
Pressing forward, upward sloping,
Né’er to pause for want of leisure,
Breathless straining, eager groping.
Careless gain another farthing,
Careless thieve the widow’s mite,
Careless leave an orphan starving,
Careless strip, enshackle, blight.
Use their throats, a ruddy stairway,
Leverage belly-pinch and need,
All their pennies pilfer, ere they
Blue-faced rattle, purpled bleed.
Notarize and seal their bondage,
Charge a fee, extract a levy,
Stake your interest in their wantage,
Necklace ’round a mill-stone heavy.
Grade them, grind them, mill them,
Pulverized from dust to dust,
In a pauper’s pie to bake them,
Use a fork to crimp the crust.
Let them subsist, but barely,
We depend on their dependence,
Give them sustenance, but sparely,
Né’er ascend our meet ascendance.
They’re a fuel, an inventory,
Store them in a barrel tight,
Packed within a branded lorry,
Feed a furnace with their light.
But an object of our pleasure,
But an object of our gain,
But a ledger entry’s measure
Of our incontested reign.
We the lords o’er masses!
We the lords o’er industry!
We the lordly money-changers,
Lording expeditiously
To build temples to our power
In the fever of reknown,
And to rape the earth and scour
For the gems to light our crown!
Né’er the means the end forbidding,
Utilize these lesser hordes,
Let them do our toilsome bidding,
Drown the din, strum joyful chords
On a lyre, we watch them burning,
Stop our ears to hear them scream,
From stone hearts there’s no returning,
There’s no flesh left to redeem.
Illustration: Gustave Doré’s depiction of the avaricious and prodigal in hell.