Fifty Years & Other Poems/Brothers

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Brothers

See! There he stands; not brave, but with an airOf sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is heNot more like brute than man? Look in his eye!No light is there; none, save the glint that shinesIn the now glaring, and now shifting orbsOf some wild animal caught in the hunter's trap.
  How came this beast in human shape and form?Speak, man!—We call you man because you wearHis shape—How are you thus? Are you not fromThat docile, child-like, tender-hearted raceWhich we have known three centuries? Not fromThat more than faithful race which through three warsFed our dear wives and nursed our helpless babesWithout a single breach of trust? Speak out!
   I am, and am not.
Then who, why are you?
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  I am a thing not new, I am as oldAs human nature. I am that which lurks,Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed;The ancient trait which fights incessantlyAgainst restraint, balks at the upward climb;The weight forever seeking to obeyThe law of downward pull;—and I am more:The bitter fruit am I of planted seed;The resultant, the inevitable endOf evil forces and the powers of wrong.
  Lessons in degradation, taught and learned,The memories of cruel sights and deeds,The pent-up bitterness, the unspent hateFiltered through fifteen generations haveSprung up and found in me sporadic life.In me the muttered curse of dying men,On me the stain of conquered women, andConsuming me the fearful fires of lust,Lit long ago, by other hands than mine.In me the down-crushed spirit, the hurled-back prayersOf wretches now long dead,—their dire bequests.—In me the echo of the stifled cryOf children for their bartered mothers' breasts.  I claim no race, no race claims me; I amNo more than human dregs; degenerate;The monstrous offspring of the monster, Sin; ​I am—just what I am. . . . The race that fedYour wives and nursed your babes would do the sameTo-day, but I—Enough, the brute must die!Quick! Chain him to that oak! It will resistThe 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 loseThe agony and terror in his face.And now the torch! Good fuel that! the flamesAlready leap head-high. Ha! hear that shriek!And there's another! wilder than the first.Fetch water! Water! Pour a little onThe 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 fleshGrows crisp and hangs till, turned to ash, it siftsDown through the coils of chain that hold erectThe 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"?

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