Explore "Sexsmith the Dentist" by Edgar Lee Masters on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Do you think that odes and sermons, / And the ringing of church bells, / And the blood of old men and young men, / Martyred for the truth they saw / With eyes made bright by faith in God, / Accomplished the world's great reformations?
Do you think that the "Battle Hymn of the Republic"
Would have been heard if the chattel slave / Had crowned the dominant dollar, / In spite of Whitney's cotton gin, / And steam and rolling mills and iron / And telegraphs and white free labor?
Do you think that Daisy Fraser / Had been put out and driven out / If the canning works had never needed / Her little house and lot?
Or do you think the poker room / Of Johnnie Taylor, and Burchard's bar / Had been closed up if the money lost / And spent for beer had not been turned, / By closing them, to Thomas Rhodes / For larger sales of shoes and blankets, / And children's cloaks and gold-oak cradles?
Why, a moral truth is a hollow tooth / Which must be propped with gold.