III

Seek him yet. Search for him!

You shall find him, spent and grim;

In the prisons, where we pen

These unsightly shards of men.

Sheltered fast;

Housed at length;

Clothed and fed, no matter how!—

Where the householders, aghast,

Measure in his broken strength

Nought but power for evil, now.

Beast-of-burden drudgeries

Could not earn him what was his:

He who heard the world applaud

Glories seized by force and fraud,

He must break,— he must take!—

Both for hate and hunger's sake.

He must seize by fraud and force;

He must strike, without remorse!

Seize he might; but never keep.

Strike, his once!— Behold him here.

( Human life we buy so cheap,

Who should know we held it dear? )

No denial,— no defence

From a brain bereft of sense,

Any more than penitence.

But the heart-beats now, that plod

Goaded — goaded — dumb with wrong,

Ask not even a ghost of God

............. How long?

When the Sea gives up its dead,

Prison caverns, yield instead

This, rejected and despised;

This, the Soiled and Sacrificed!

Without form or comeliness;

Shamed for us that did transgress;

Bruised, for our iniquities,

With the stripes that are all his!

Face that wreckage, you who can.

It was once the Singing Man.