Where misfortune's children rally;
And the hot crime-breeding nights,
And the dearth of God's delights.

And I think of narrow prisons
Where unhappy songbirds dwell,
And of cruel pens and cages
Where some captured wild thing rages
Like a madman in his cell,
In the Zoo, the wild beasts' hell.

And I long to lift the burden
Of man's selfishness and sin;
And to open wide earth's treasures
Of God's storehouse, full of pleasures,
For my dumb and human kin,
And to ask the whole world in.



THE BREAKING OF CHAINS



Between the ringing of bells and the musical clang of chimes
I hear a sound like the breaking of chains, all through these
Christmas times.
For the thought of the world is waking out of a slumber deep and
long,
And the race is beginning to understand how Right can master Wrong.