SONNET IV
“IN FRANCE ALONE!”
I sometimes fancy in France is left alone
The love of beauty.—What our world will be
When foul-breathed iron-clads possess the sea
That once was white-armed Venus' white-waved throne—
When with one piteous cry, one deathless moan,
She feels that fragrance from her rose must flee,—
What then from earth will fade eternally
Art dimly guesses; not the worst is known.
America, with England in her wake,
Worships alone success and wealth. She strives
On the waste débris of uncounted lives
Babels to build that shadow the daybreak
And mock the stars. Vast issues are at stake.
Choose well, before the hour of doom arrives.
“Caste, class, reverence, hereditary right, religion, count for nothing.
‘Business’ is the object and end of existence. . . . . In many things
—in transit, in telegraph and postage, in cotton and woollen work—
America lags far behind England; but few can doubt that supremacy
under these differing conditions is only a matter of time. The future
is a change only comparable with the descent of the barbarians upon
the Roman Empire; with the triumph of the machine and the race
who knows how to use it, a new page will be opened in the history
of the world.”—Daily News, April 3, 1903. Article on America at Work,
by J. Foster Fraser.
