Chapter 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._