The Larger Life: A Poem Dedicated to Franklin Ford

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There was more quality in the news

Some fifty years ago

Than, with all their prattle of ‘progress,’

The current journal shows.

The modern newspaper has caught to be

A kind of Pedler’s pack,

With less grip of Life’s moving unities

Than rules the pedler’s clack.

The clean sense of convincing relations

Is wholly lost to view

In the hodge-podge of undigested slop

Served in the daily stew.

The thought of integrity in news

(The truth entirely freed)

Is one with the notion of government—

The social daily need,

Communication parallels Commerce,

And Commerce, or the State

Never reaches full organization

Till the facts are ‘straight.’

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