Christ Crucified by Ella Wheeler Wilcox — Read

Now ere I slept, my prayer had been that I might see my way / To do the will of Christ, our Lord and Master, day by day; / And with this prayer upon my lips, I knew not that I dreamed, / But suddenly the world of night a pandemonium seemed. / From forest, and from slaughter house, from bull ring, and from stall, / There rose an anguished cry of pain, a loud, appealing call; / As man-the dumb beast's next of kin-with gun, and whip, and knife, / Went pleasure-seeking through the earth, blood-bent on taking life. / From trap, and cage, and house, and zoo, and street, that awful strain / Of tortured creatures rose and swelled the orchestra of pain. / And then methought the gentle Christ appeared to me, and spoke: / ‘I called you, but ye answered not'-and in my fear I woke.

Then next I heard the roar of mills; and moving through the noise, / Like phantoms in an underworld, were little girls and boys. / Their backs were bent, their brows were pale, their eyes were sad and / old; / But by the labour of their hands greed added gold to gold. / Again the Presence and the Voice: ‘Behold the crimes I see, / As ye have done it unto these, so have ye done to me.'