Chaplin is not a dangerous man--except as his ideas are dangerous to
the existing order of society. His presence in the penitentiary, under
a twenty year sentence, indicates how dangerous those ideas are
considered by the masters of American public life. Rich those masters
are--fabulously rich; and strong they may be, yet so insecure do they
feel themselves that they are constrained to hold in prison this
dreamer and singer of the new social order.
Chaplin, in prison, like Debs in prison, is doing his work. He is
resisting the encroachments of those jail demons--hate, bitterness,
revenge; he is holding his mind on the goal--a newer, better social
order; he is keeping his vision of nature, of humanity, of
brotherhood, of courage, of love, of beauty,--clear and bright.
Chaplin, the man, is in jail; but Chaplin the poet and singer is
roaming wherever books go; wherever papers are read, and wherever
comrades repeat verses to one another in the flickering light of the
evening fire.
SCOTT NEARING.
MOURN NOT THE DEAD
Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie--
Dust unto dust--
The calm, sweet earth that mothers all who die
As all men must;
Mourn not your captive comrades who must dwell--
Too strong to strive--
Within each steel-bound coffin of a cell,
Buried alive;
But rather mourn the apathetic throng--
The cowed and the meek--
Who see the world's great anguish and its wrong
And dare not speak!
TAPS
The day is ended! Ghostly shadows creep
Along each dim-lit wall and corridor.
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