The People of Today to the Clergy of Today
Look now about you, fix your eyes on us,
Leave too-old mystic book and restful chair;
Take up our problems, things we must discuss,
Help us to think, to understand and dare.
Leave old-world Poetry of hallowed crime
And turn you to the hunger of the time.
Laws of the God, report them to the ears
That hear confused and cosmic voices rage;
Laws of the Christ, interpret them to fears
For Christ, new-risen in a Science-Age.
Oh, take the fire your sacred hands should give
And kindle it upon our city height;
Give us a world-strong law of wrong and right;
Teach us, not how to die, but how to live!
The hymns we sing must be the song of spheres,
The prayers we pray be truths of stone and star;
We want no sacrifice of sinner’s tears,
We want to rise above this clay we are.
Our war machines, do they not teach the thing
Your maxims never taught us...? Ah, we flee
To the Waste Places in our sorrowing....
Show us the power of true divinity!
Look now around you, free your too-white hands;
Comfort these hearts that burn. What must we do?
We have no Paul, no Moses, only you.
Then help us to be honest. From all lands,
Priests! Men! Arise! Acclaim! The new bread give;
The Bread by which we shall not die, but live!