For that which we have humbly wrought, Give us to-day thy kindly smile; Wherein we've failed or fallen short, Bear with us, Father, yet awhile.
Father, Father Abraham, To-day we lift our hearts to thee, Filled with the thought of what great price Was paid, that we might ransomed be.
To-day we consecrate ourselves Anew in hand and heart and brain, To send this judgment down the years: The ransom was not paid in vain.
See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye! No light is there; none, save the glint that shines In the now glaring, and now shifting orbs Of some wild animal caught in the hunter's trap.
How came this beast in human shape and form? Speak, man!--We call you man because you wear His shape--How are you thus? Are you not from That docile, child-like, tender-hearted race Which we have known three centuries? Not from That more than faithful race which through three wars Fed our dear wives and nursed our helpless babes Without a single breach of trust? Speak out!
I am a thing not new, I am as old As human nature. I am that which lurks, Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed; The ancient trait which fights incessantly Against restraint, balks at the upward climb; The weight forever seeking to obey The law of downward pull;--and I am more: The bitter fruit am I of planted seed; The resultant, the inevitable end Of evil forces and the powers of wrong.
Lessons in degradation, taught and learned, The memories of cruel sights and deeds, The pent-up bitterness, the unspent hate Filtered through fifteen generations have Sprung up and found in me sporadic life. In me the muttered curse of dying men, On me the stain of conquered women, and Consuming me the fearful fires of lust, Lit long ago, by other hands than mine. In me the down-crushed spirit, the hurled-back prayers Of wretches now long dead,--their dire bequests.-- In me the echo of the stifled cry Of children for their bartered mothers' breasts. I claim no race, no race claims me; I am No more than human dregs; degenerate; The monstrous offspring of the monster, Sin; I am--just what I am.... The race that fed Your wives and nursed your babes would do the same To-day, but I--