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._ IV Must it be?--Must we then Render back to God again This His broken work, this thing, For His man that once did sing? Will not all our wonders do? Gifts we stored the ages through, (Trusting that He had forgot)-- Gifts the Lord requirèd not? Would the all-but-human serve! Monsters made of stone and nerve; Towers to threaten and defy Curse or blessing of the sky; Shafts that blot the stars with smoke; Lightnings harnessed under yoke; Sea-things, air-things, wrought with steel, That may smite, and fly, and feel! Oceans calling each to each; Hostile hearts, with kindred speech. Every work that Titans can; Every marvel: save a man, Who might rule without a sword.-- Is a man more precious, Lord? Can it be?--Must we then Render back to Thee again Million, million wasted men? Men, of flickering human breath, Only made for life and death? Ah, but see the sovereign Few, Highly favored, that remain! These, the glorious residue, Of the cherished race of Cain. These, the magnates of the age, High above the human wage, Who have numbered and possesst All the portion of the rest! What are all despairs and shames, What the mean, forgotten names Of the thousand more or less, For one surfeit of success?