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| FOOLS who kill for the lust of blood, fiends of the slaughter pen, | |
| Who wreak red malice on women and babes and gray and defenceless men; | |
| Murderers, thugs, assassins, who, e’en in religion’s name, | |
| Dare the work of the ghouls to do, and crawl in your bestial shame— | |
| This in the name of religion. Why, fools who are less than clod, | 5 |
| From the Jew you borrowed your altar, from the Jew you filched your God. | |
| His was the great Jehovah whom your churchly rites attest, | |
| And his was the wondrous Bible that shone on your darkened West. | |
| His David still is singing, | |
| Your souls oppressed to thrill, | 10 |
| And Sinai’s voice is ringing: | |
| “Thou shalt not, shalt not kill!” | |
| Murderers! thugs! assassins! sodden and ingrate crew! | |
| Most of the best ye now disdain was learned of the hated Jew! | |
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| In temples of desecration his psalms ye have mouthed today; | 15 |
| Then turned from the hollow praises to slaughter and kill and slay; | |
| Ye have mourned with his Jeremiah, as great was your need to do, | |
| But if mourning fostered brute alone, small was the gain to you. | |
| “Why should ye be stricken any more?” Isaiah moaneth still, | |
| But all that ye learn from the broken words is kill—and kill—and kill! | 20 |
| And Rachel still is mourning that her children are no more, | |
| While your hearts are mad with malice and your hands are red with gore. | |
| Still rolls the awful thunder | |
| O’er Sinai’s darkened hill, | |
| While still—oh, deed of wonder!— | 25 |
| Ye kill—and kill—and kill! | |
| Fools who are less than brutish, tyranny’s pestilent crew, | |
| A beast may spring on his master—and ye do murder the Jew. | |
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| When your forbears sat in their frozen dens and mumbled their rotten bones | |
| From Palestine echoed northward the great Jehovah’s tones. | 30 |
| The God of the Jew had spoken, and your ancestor heard and knew, | |
| And his first dim knowledge of truth and right he learned of the hated Jew. | |
| Aye, more! From Nazareth came one day the Man who is thine and mine, | |
| And he set in the soul of the brutish man the germ of a thought divine, | |
| And the germ took root in the soul of man, and ever it bloomed and grew, | 35 |
| And the Christ whom your crimsoned hands do flout was a Jew and the son of a Jew, | |
| His heart for the sad world bleeding, | |
| He loved and forgave us still; | |
| And yet, that lesson unheeding, | |
| Ye kill—and kill—and kill! | 40 |
| Fools who are less than brutish, tyranny’s pestilent crew, | |
| All that the world holds dearest is slaughtered in him—the Jew. | |
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