’Commerce has set the mark of selfishness,
The signet of its all-enslaving power
Upon a shining ore, and called it gold:  55
Before whose image bow the vulgar great,
The vainly rich, the miserable proud,
The mob of peasants, nobles, priests, and kings,
And with blind feelings reverence the power
That grinds them to the dust of misery. 60
But in the temple of their hireling hearts
Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn
All earthly things but virtue.

’Since tyrants, by the sale of human life,
Heap luxuries to their sensualism, and fame 65
To their wide-wasting and insatiate pride,
Success has sanctioned to a credulous world
The ruin, the disgrace, the woe of war. 
His hosts of blind and unresisting dupes
The despot numbers; from his cabinet 70
These puppets of his schemes he moves at will,
Even as the slaves by force or famine driven,
Beneath a vulgar master, to perform
A task of cold and brutal drudgery;—­
Hardened to hope, insensible to fear, 75
Scarce living pulleys of a dead machine,
Mere wheels of work and articles of trade,
That grace the proud and noisy pomp of wealth!

’The harmony and happiness of man
Yields to the wealth of nations; that which lifts 80
His nature to the heaven of its pride,
Is bartered for the poison of his soul;
The weight that drags to earth his towering hopes,
Blighting all prospect but of selfish gain,
Withering all passion but of slavish fear, 85
Extinguishing all free and generous love
Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse
That fancy kindles in the beating heart
To mingle with sensation, it destroys,—­
Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, 90
The grovelling hope of interest and gold,
Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed
Even by hypocrisy. 
And statesmen boast
Of wealth!  The wordy eloquence, that lives
After the ruin of their hearts, can gild 95
The bitter poison of a nation’s woe,
Can turn the worship of the servile mob
To their corrupt and glaring idol, Fame,
From Virtue, trampled by its iron tread,
Although its dazzling pedestal be raised 100
Amid the horrors of a limb-strewn field,
With desolated dwellings smoking round. 
The man of ease, who, by his warm fireside,
To deeds of charitable intercourse,
And bare fulfilment of the common laws 105
Of decency and prejudice, confines
The struggling nature of his human heart,
Is duped by their cold sophistry; he sheds
A passing tear perchance upon the wreck
Of earthly peace, when near his dwelling’s door