Page:The poems of Richard Watson Gilder, Gilder, 1908.djvu/431

Rh And when they would fain cease their saying, they may not, for a clear-voiced Questioner is as the finger of fate and the crack of doom.

What they would hide they reveal, what they would cover they make plain;

What they feared to speak aloud to one another, unwilling they publish to all mankind;

And the people listen with bowed heads, wondering and in grief;

And wise men, and they who love their country, turn pale and ask: "What new shame will come upon us?"

And again they ask, "Are these they in whose keep are the substance and hope of the widow and the fatherless?"

And the poor man, plodding home with his scant earnings from his hard week's work, hears the voices, with bitterness in his soul.

And thieves, lurking in dark places and furtively seizing that which is not their own; and the petty and cowardly briber, and he who is bribed, nudge one another;

And the anarch and the thrower of bombs clap hands together, and cry out: "Behold these our allies!"

BEFORE THE GRAND JURY

, who has been a man's desire,

Now cast aside like ashes from a fire,

With startled breath, confessing all her shame,

Here,—looking in the faces of strange men,

Who probe remorselessly their "where" and "when,"

Falters her dreadful story, that the blame

May strike on the betrayer. In that glare

Plead piteous answers hardly might she dare

Murmur, at midnight, on a mother's breast.