On hearing Harry the Stockman is to be evicted

Had it been so, there would have been a legend
How the innkeeper who slept in his bed
That night, never slept more, his eyelids withered,
Gnawed by the living fat worm without end.

But it was not so: who pronounced the hotel full
And went back to his moll, his wine, his honey,
Flushed, copulated, belched, then gave cold money,
Noticed no star, knelt to no mucky Infant, dull

Spent his days in ease, died not uncomfortable,
Left in his will a relic of his power
Over his wife’s affection, over his property; sour
Arrogance of ownership sat at his subject table

Long after he was gone. The Child was hung,
Whipped, scoffed, despised, denied, and in disgrace
Died crying for his Father’s coup de grâce,
His Mother watching: and thus the pattern continues among

Humanity. ‘Heaven!’ some cry—are tortured, killed;
‘Rewards are not on earth!’, shrieked in the flames
Echoes in calendars’ martyred believers’ names.
These are the lunatic fringe: with paunch well filled,
Backed with sound property, his limbs at ease,
Sits on the scaffold, watches the pyre smoke,
Dives, the obstinate landlord, in rich cloak
Of office, manufacturer of household needs, cheese-

Cutter, swindler, next to the prissy-lipped old crone
Whose husband cheats within the law
At the Exchange, or sells a rotten raw
Powder as rare, and thus presumes herself a privileged one