Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/137

134 For he led the sacred singing in an unctuous, nasal tone, And he looked as if the sermon and the Scriptures were his own.

But one day the white-haired preacher spoke of how God's justice fell Soon or late with awful sureness on the man whose heart could tell Of a wrong done to the widow or the orphan, and he said That such wrongs were ever living, though the injured ones were dead. And old Sculpin's heart was writhing, though his heavy eyes were closed,— For, despite his solemn sanctity, at sermon times he dozed; But his half-awakened senses heard the preacher speak of death And of wrongs done unto orphans, and he dreamed with wheezing breath