Fifty Years & Other Poems/Fragment

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Fragment

The hand of Fate cannot be stayed,The course of Fate cannot be steered,By all the gods that man has made,Nor all the devils he has feared,Not by the prayers that might be prayedIn all the temples he has reared.
See! In your very midst there dwellTen thousand thousand blacks, a wedgeForged in the furnaces of hell,And sharpened to a cruel edgeBy wrong and by injustice fell,And driven by hatred as a sledge.
A wedge so slender at the start—Just twenty slaves in shackles bound—And yet, which split the land apart ​With shrieks of war and battle sound,Which pierced the nation's very heart,And still lies cankering in the wound.
Not all the glory of your pride,Preserved in story and in song,Can from the judging future hide,Through all the coming ages long,That though you bravely fought and died,You fought and died for what was wrong.
'Tis fixed—for them that violateThe eternal laws, naught shall availTill they their error expiate;Nor shall their unborn children failTo pay the full required weightInto God's great, unerring scale.
Think not repentance can redeem,That sin his wages can withdraw;No, think as well to change the schemeOf worlds that move in reverent awe;Forgiveness is an idle dream,God is not love, no, God is law.
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