Behold this maimed and broken thing, dear God; it was an humble black man, who toiled and sweat to save a bit from the pittance paid him. They told him: _Work and Rise!_ He worked. Did this man sin? Nay, but someone told how someone said another did--one whom he had never seen nor known. Yet for that man's crime this man lieth maimed and murdered, his wife naked to shame, his children to poverty and evil. _Hear us, O heavenly Father!_ Doth not this justice of hell stink in Thy nostrils, O God? How long shall the mounting flood of innocent blood roar in Thine ears and pound in our hearts for vengeance? Pile the pale frenzy of blood-crazed brutes, who do such deeds, high on Thine Altar, Jehovah Jireh, and burn it in hell forever and forever! _Forgive us, good Lord; we know not what we say!_ Bewildered we are and passion-tossed, mad with the madness of a mobbed and mocked and murdered people; straining at the armposts of Thy throne, we raise our shackled hands and charge Thee, God, by the bones of our stolen fathers, by the tears of our dead mothers, by the very blood of Thy crucified Christ: What meaneth this? Tell us the plan; give us the sign! _Keep not Thou silent, O God!_ Sit not longer blind, Lord God, deaf to our prayer and dumb to our dumb suffering. Surely Thou, too, art not white, O Lord, a pale, bloodless, heartless thing! _Ah! Christ of all the Pities!_ Forgive the thought! Forgive these wild, blasphemous words! Thou art still the God of our black fathers and in Thy Soul's Soul sit some soft darkenings of the evening, some shadowings of the velvet night. But whisper--speak--call, great God, for Thy silence is white terror to our hearts! The way, O God, show us the way and point us the path! Whither? North is greed and South is blood; within, the coward, and without, the liar. Whither? To death? _Amen! Welcome, dark sleep!_ Whither? To life? But not this life, dear God, not this. Let the cup pass from us, tempt us not beyond our strength, for there is that clamoring and clawing within, to whose voice we would not listen, yet shudder lest we must,--and it is red. Ah! God! It is a red and awful shape. _Selah!_ In yonder East trembles a star. _Vengeance is Mine; I will repay, saith the Lord!_ Thy Will, O Lord, be done! _Kyrie Eleison!_ Lord, we have done these pleading, wavering words. _We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_ We bow our heads and hearken soft to the sobbing of women and little children. _We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_ Our voices sink in silence and in night. _Hear us, good Lord!_ In night, O God of a godless land! _Amen!_ In silence, O Silent God. _Selah!_ II THE SOULS OF WHITE FOLK High in the tower, where I sit above the loud complaining of the human sea, I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but none there are that intrigue me more than the Souls of White Folk.