all-enslaving

Updated: May 24, 2025

Shelley, if he had stood in the midst of the gamblers, staking all, even their souls, for gold, in those California days of wild revelry, could not have expressed himself more appositely than in his graphic and truthful lines, in Queen Mab: "Commerce has set the mark of selfishness; The signet of its all-enslaving power Upon a shining ore, and called it gold: 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.

Joseph Carey - By the Golden Gate