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 required 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?

For those dullest lives we spent,
Take these Few magnificent! 
For that host of blotted ones,
Take these glittering central suns. 
Few;—­but how their lustre thrives
On the million broken lives! 
Splendid, over dark and doubt,
For a million souls gone out! 
These, the holders of our hoard,—­
    Wilt thou not accept them, Lord?