What tears be these, my Sons? What ails ye that ye weep? Speak, Shepherds of the flock! Ye that have cared my sheep, Ye that are charged with Man. Is it as this One saith? Is Satan then no liar who loudly witnesseth Man's ruin of the World? THE ANGEL OF PITY (_coming forward_) Lord, it is even so Thy Earth is a lost force, Man's lazar-house of woe, Undone by his lewd will. We may no longer strive. The evil hath prevailed. There is no soul alive That shall escape his greed. We spend our days in tears Mourning Thy world's lost beauty in the night of years. All pity is departed. Each once happy thing That on Thy fair Earth went, how fleet of foot or wing, How glorious in its strength, how wondrous in design, How royal in its raiment tinctured opaline, How rich in joyous life, the inheritor of forms All noble, all of worth, which had survived the storms, The chances of decay in the World's living plan, From the remote fair past when still ignoble Man On his four foot-soles went and howled through the lone hills In moody bestial wrath, unclassed among Earth's ills-- Each one of them is doomed. From the deep Central Seas To the white Poles, Man ruleth pitiless Lord of these, And daily he destroyeth. The great whales he driveth Beneath the northern ice, and quarter none he giveth, Who perish there of wounds in their huge agony. He presseth the white bear on the white frozen sea And slaughtereth for his pastime. The wise amorous seal He flayeth big with young, the walrus cubs that kneel But cannot turn his rage, alive he mangleth them, Leaveth in breathing heaps, outrooted branch and stem. In every land he slayeth. He hath new engines made Which no life may withstand, nor in the forest shade Nor in the sunlit plain, which wound all from afar, The timorous with the valiant, waging his false war, Coward, himself unseen. In pity, Lord, look down On the blank widowed plains which he hath made his own By right of solitude. Where, Lord God, are they now, Thy glorious bison herds, Thy ariels white as snow, Thy antelopes in troops, the zebras of Thy plain? Behold their whitened bones on the dull track of men. Thy elephants, Lord, where? For ages thou didst build Their frames' capacity, the hide which was their shield No thorn might pierce, no sting, no violent tooth assail, The tusks which were their levers, the lithe trunk their flail. Thou strengthenedst their deep brain. Thou madest them wise to know And wiser to ignore, advised, deliberate, slow, Conscious of power supreme in right. The manifest token Of Thy high will on earth, Thy natural peace unbroken, Unbreakable by fear. For ages did they move Thus, kings of Thy deep forest swayed by only love. Where are they now, Lord God? A fugitive spent few Used as Man's living targets by the ignoble crew Who boast their coward skill to plant the balls that fly.