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ARREARS
Our gratitude goes up in smoke,
In incense smoke of prayer;
We thank the Underlying Love,
The Overarching Care—
We do not thank the living men
Who make our lives so fair.
For long insolvent centuries
We have been clothed and fed,
By the spared captive, spared for once,
By inches slain instead;
He gave his service and is gone;
Unthanked, unpaid, and dead.
His labor built the world we love;
Our highest flights to-day
Rest on the service of the past,
Which we can never pay;
A long repudiated debt
Blackens our upward way.
Our fingers owed his fathers dead—
Disgrace beyond repair!
No late remorse, no new-found shame
Can save our honor there:
But we can now begin to pay
The starved and stunted heir!
We thank the Power above for all—
Gladly we do, and should.
But might we not save out a part
Of our large gratitude,
And give it to the power on earth—
Where it will do some good?
Previous: A SMALL GOD AND A LARGE GODDESS
Next: THREE THANKSGIVINGS