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| WE are the toilers from whom God barred | |
| The gifts that are good to hold. | |
| We meant full well and we tried full hard, | |
| And our failures were manifold. | |
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| And we are the clan of those whose kin | 5 |
| Were a millstone dragging them down. | |
| Yea, we had to sweat for our brother’s sin, | |
| And lose the victor’s crown. | |
| |
| The seeming-able, who all but scored, | |
| From their teeming tribe we come: | 10 |
| What was there wrong with us, O Lord, | |
| That our lives were dark and dumb? | |
| |
| The men ten-talented, who still | |
| Strangely missed of the goal, | |
| Of them we are: it seems Thy will | 15 |
| To harrow some in soul. | |
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| We are the sinners, too, whose lust | |
| Conquered the higher claims, | |
| We sat us prone in the common dust, | |
| And played at the devil’s games. | 20 |
| |
| We are the hard-luck folk, who strove | |
| Zealously, but in vain; | |
| We lost and lost, while our comrades throve, | |
| And still we lost again. | |
| |
| We are the doubles of those whose way | 25 |
| Was festal with fruits and flowers: | |
| Body and brain we were sound as they, | |
| But the prizes were not ours. | |
| |
| A mighty army our full ranks make, | |
| We shake the graves as we go; | 30 |
| The sudden stroke and the slow heartbreak, | |
| They both have brought us low. | |
| |
| And while we are laying life’s sword aside, | |
| Spent and dishonored and sad, | |
| Our epitaph this, when once we have died: | 35 |
| “The weak lie here, and the bad.” | |
| |
| We wonder if this can be really the close, | |
| Life’s fever cooled by death’s trance; | |
| And we cry, though it seem to our dearest of foes, | |
| “God, give us another chance!” | 40 |
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