dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poetry: A Magazine of Verse  »  Jessica Nelson North

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

The Wages of Sin

Jessica Nelson North

GOD the Inscrutable

Looked on complacently

The while young Denison

Slipped all his debts by careful insolvency,

Broke his wife’s heart, and ruined the serving girl.

But Lobster Salad and Iced Watermelon—

That was too much for even a godhead:

“I’ll smite him for that,” quoth God the Inscrutable.

And the wretch died in torment

At two in the morning.