Lessons in degradation, taught and learned,
    The memories of cruel sights and deeds,
    The pent-up bitterness, the unspent hate
    Filtered through fifteen generations have
    Sprung up and found in me sporadic life. 
    In me the muttered curse of dying men,
    On me the stain of conquered women, and
    Consuming me the fearful fires of lust,
    Lit long ago, by other hands than mine. 
    In me the down-crushed spirit, the hurled-back prayers
    Of wretches now long dead,—­their dire bequests.—­
    In me the echo of the stifled cry
    Of children for their bartered mothers’ breasts. 
        I claim no race, no race claims me; I am
    No more than human dregs; degenerate;
    The monstrous offspring of the monster, Sin;
    I am—­just what I am....  The race that fed
    Your wives and nursed your babes would do the same
    To-day, but I—­

                      Enough, the brute must die! 
    Quick!  Chain him to that oak!  It will resist
    The fire much longer than this slender pine. 
    Now bring the fuel!  Pile it ’round him!  Wait! 
    Pile not so fast or high! or we shall lose
    The agony and terror in his face. 
    And now the torch!  Good fuel that! the flames
    Already leap head-high.  Ha! hear that shriek! 
    And there’s another! wilder than the first. 
    Fetch water!  Water!  Pour a little on
    The fire, lest it should burn too fast.  Hold so! 
    Now let it slowly blaze again.  See there! 
    He squirms!  He groans!  His eyes bulge wildly out,
    Searching around in vain appeal for help! 
    Another shriek, the last!  Watch how the flesh
    Grows crisp and hangs till, turned to ash, it sifts
    Down through the coils of chain that hold erect
    The ghastly frame against the bark-scorched tree.

        Stop! to each man no more than one man’s share. 
    You take that bone, and you this tooth; the chain—­
    Let us divide its links; this skull, of course,
    In fair division, to the leader comes.

        And now his fiendish crime has been avenged;
    Let us back to our wives and children.—­Say,
    What did he mean by those last muttered words,
    “Brothers in spirit, brothers in deed are we”?

FRAGMENT

    The hand of Fate cannot be stayed,
    The course of Fate cannot be steered,
    By all the gods that man has made,
    Nor all the devils he has feared,
    Not by the prayers that might be prayed
    In all the temples he has reared.

    See!  In your very midst there dwell
    Ten thousand thousand blacks, a wedge
    Forged in the furnaces of hell,
    And sharpened to a cruel edge
    By wrong and by injustice fell,
    And driven by hatred as a sledge.