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| Thomas Hart Benton's "Indifference" |
While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity,
heavily thickening to empire,
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops
and sighs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make
fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances,
ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life
is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than
mountains; shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their
distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, and when the cities lie at the
monster’s feet there are left the mountains.
And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man,
a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught
—they say—God, when he walked on earth.
~ Robinson Jeffers
I would burn my right hand in a slow fire
To change the future ... I would do so foolishly. The
beauty of modern
Man is not in the persons but in the
Disastrous rhythm, the heavy and mobile masses, the dance
of the
Dream-led masses down the dark mountain.
~ Robinson Jeffers