Page:The Poet in the Desert.djvu/24

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TRUTH: But not the children of the Poor.

POET: The black-gowned men delicately fold their hands And groan through the nose, "The will of God."

TRUTH: The long and backward path is marked with martyred

skulls For which the black-robed men have said "The will of

God." Man makes his God and thinks his God makes him. There is no God but Nature, no hell but of man's making.

POET: I know not my beginning, neither whence nor whither ; But I perceive my own littleness and my own greatness ; I am one with the mole, blind beneath the grass, And I am one, also, with the limitless skies ; I am not only myself, but I am child of the generations. And father unto those to come.

TRUTH: Who is not father to the children? Who is not brother unto all who live?

POET: Murderers, thieves and prostitutes. All you criminals,

You are my brothers and my sisters. I have consented to the conditions which lay with you in

your mother's womb. Before you were bom, I prepared you for The brothel and the gallows; And I have prepared them for you. My little children, Oh, my little children ; You are mine as much as you are your father's, and more ;

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