The Echoes

Brothers,

Have you ever noticed how the aver-
age citizen smothers
His intellect?
And, in effect,
Borrows all his opinions, ideas,
thoughts, conclusions and convic-
tions from others.

Brothers, we have grown in these
years mentally lazy:
Our ideas are hazy;
We have no ideas of our own;
And yet we cannot let the game alone,
And what I mean when I say the game
Is the apportioning of blame
To those who seek to lead us—
We are in our ignorance ever apt to
allege that they bleed us.

. . . . . . .

Take the average citizen Brown,
Aramatic his toilet for his daily trip
into town—
Think you that, as he adjusts his collar
And curses his near silk tie for which
he was taken down for a dollar—
Think you he is full of bright and
original thought.
Indeed, he ought,
As a modern cultured educated man,
To be evolving some bright and 
original plan
For the betterment of his race;
But on his face
is a blank and foolish expression
Which amounts to a confession
That he is willing to be led by the nose—
By those
Whose words magnetic
Persuade him that they are super-men,
simply because they are a little more
energetic.

Then having eaten his eggs and hum,
He voyages to town by train or tram,
And there meets Jones
who owns
A suit almost a replica of Brown's
It is the towns
Crude influences that causes such a thing.
'Tis modern culture such weird phases
brings.
For if
Is written,
As the tail of the coat of Brown shall
have a little split,
'Tis echoes brother, echoes all the time
I'm glad of that word for the sake of a rhyme

And then Jones talks to Brown—
Brown talks to Jones—they talk each
other down,
And all they say:
Amounts to just insulting some Spring
day.

I would imagine Brown a pirate bold,
Gathering treasure from some doomed
ship's hold.
I would imagine Jones a buccaneer,
Filling some foreign port with sudden
fear.

But no They sit in trains
While Brown complains
Of politics, and echoes other brains.
And Jones
Discretly owns
He doesn't know a thing about the
game.
But still the world is rotten all the
same.
So they
Go on each day,
Frittering all the happy hours away—
Echoing, echoing,  echoing all the time
As I have echoed their remarks in
rhyme.