| |
| IN the weary night they come to me, | |
| The tears that I left unshed, | |
| When I trudged the thorny wilderness | |
| With the sun-flame overhead. | |
| I lie awake in the friendly night, | 5 |
| My soul too numb to pray, | |
| Enjoying the cool of its velvet black | |
| In the dread of the coming day. | |
| |
| For the day must come and the sting of it, | |
| As I bend to the endless road, | 10 |
| The light must come and the pain of it— | |
| The bite of the lashing goad. | |
| But this I know as I reel along | |
| To the nations’ hue and cry, | |
| A burning truth in the hand of God; | 15 |
| I know that I must not die. | |
| |
| They say my soul is twisted and warped, | |
| My ways are cringing and mean, | |
| That I worship the bulk of the calf of gold, | |
| That my hands are not white and clean; | 20 |
| They say—but a thousand reasons hold | |
| To stalk the quarry then | |
| When the lust for blood is hunger-felt | |
| By the beast that dwells in men. | |
| |
| When Kindness is taught at the end of a rope, | 25 |
| And Love to the music of groans; | |
| When Charity masks in a cloak of flame, | |
| And Mercy in falling stones— | |
| What wonder the balm for the spirit fails | |
| When the wounds are kept so fresh | 30 |
| Through countless years of active hate | |
| In the rack of the tortured flesh? | |
| |
| I have ceased to long for the clasp of Love, | |
| To dream of the smile of a friend, | |
| I grip my trusty wander-staff | 35 |
| In a journey without an end. | |
| My faith is strong as the primal rocks, | |
| And deep as my tearless woes; | |
| I am Job of the nations—heir of wrongs, | |
| But why—Jehovah knows. | 40 |
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