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The Twentieth Century Epic

Chapter 14: Blew Inn
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About This Book

The poet delivers a wide-ranging, didactic critique of modern society, arguing that centralization, expanding public systems, and proliferating laws concentrate power and weaken individual liberty. He targets taxation schemes, legal technicalities, political corruption, and cultural institutions for contributing to economic strain and moral decline, warning that unchecked bureaucratic growth risks social unrest. Rather than retribution, he urges rehabilitation for offenders, lower pay for officeholders to curb graft, and a return to limited government grounded in natural law, civic responsibility, and practical ethics. Occasional digressions consider art, science, and war as contexts for these moral and political prescriptions.

Blew Inn

(A Digression)

A sunny Sunday morning in May,
Aimlessly to woods did I stray.
Companions none, but longing to see
One in like plight, I chanced upon three;
The Masons two, wife and man, and one,
A lad in his teens, made up
A quartet with me to fill joy’s cup.
With lusty minnows in pail to its fill,
We took up rods and pail, reels and line,
And, in our barque sailed forth to find
Some less wary of the finny kind.
In vain did we tempt the fickle fish;
But at noon instead, with a dainty dish,
Of eggs partly spilled and ham and things
Fit for appetites toil and pleasure brings,
We dined and ate to the brim.
Two shy frogs sitting dreamily on logs
Became prey to us as if native bogs.
Fast flew the flushing day away;
A trolley call, and one and all did say;
Shine on old sol another day.