While The Billy BoilsSearchHaste not, pale zealots, cross in hand,To peoples far away;They rage within your native land,The Heathen of to-day.
Their altars mock the sullen skies,They worship unafraid,With daily human sacrifice,The Juggernauts of Trade,
Black Competition’s altars smoke;The people’s veins run dry;Mammon’s accursed vultures chokeThe glory of the sky.
Hyssop and rue and mandragoreFringe Fashion’s fetid marge;The helot sinks beside the oarOn Luxury’s gilded barge.
The Heathen sunk in mire of creeds,And riot of excess,Hedged by historic wrong that pleadsFor all unrighteousness!
Ecclesiastic lords that mockHumanity’s poor need,And sacerdotal granaries lockWith triple bars of greed!
Judicial murderers, whose handsEncompass misery!Despots who hold or loose the bandsOf human destiny,
Who, born and bred within the bondOf Macchiavellian bars,Conceive no deity beyondTheir piteous avatars,
Who offer human sacrificeTo idols made of dross,And spit upon the fearful priceOf Christ upon the cross —
Yea! in their blind idolatrySloth-slackened sinews strainTo lift the Lamb of CalvaryUpon the Cross again!
For these! for these that break and bleedTo glut their follies new,These for whose sake that Christ would plead“They know not what they do!”
— Meek zealots, let your lamps be lit!Haste! win them while ye may!In Earth’s high places proudly sitThe “Heathen” of to-day!