The Inheritor

Look you, ye line of men and women reaching back Behind my shoulders into Life’s lost dawn-- Ye square-jawed, low-browed, fierce-eyed fighting-man; Ye fawning slave, cringing before the whip; Ye strong-souled prophet of diviner things; Ye praying saint, ye sensuous, sin-steeped fool; Ye seer, love driven, paying drop by drop Thy own blood down to buy thy brother’s need; Ye sleek and shifty plotter, cunning-lipped Ye pale ascetic, ye the loose-tongued bawd; Ye weak, and tender, loving, scorning, mad With glutted pride--abased in misery; Ye that have measured all the pendulum Of human passion, chance, and hope, and pain-- I bid ye halt; I am the crucible, My will the furnace fire; fused here in me Your motley ore shall take what shape I choose, To serve what end I order and command.

I’ll make of ye my weapon and my tool, My sword and plowshare. Ye shall hold or break, Strike or be idle, at my word. In my hand Ye shall be gathered as a missile fit And hurled subservient to seek my goal. Look in my eyes and know I fear ye not; Because ye were I am--and rule ye now. I will not go your road nor seek your end; I will not pray your prayer nor sing your song; Ye shall not sear me with the sullen heat Of your spent passions. My lips shall never writhe With bitter pleading for your old desires. Ye shall not shake my soul with your lost fears, Nor grip my heart with dead regret and pain.

I am your master; if ye live again Ye take life from my hand at my own terms. I will bind up the fire that flared in you To use diverse, and make of it a torch Clear-flamed and strong to light the road I choose. Your wrongs shall set me free from kindred wrong; Your labor and your loss shall be the steps Beneath my feet on which I stand to rise. Your hopes undone shall wing my hope for flight; I will take up the broken dreams that fell From your spent grasp and weld them into one-- A deathless vision of futurity.

O ye dead hearts that ached; dead hands that clinched In fear or fury; dead lips that lied or loved; Dead souls that grovelled or aspired as ye could-- Ye rule me not--I am the master here. For my swift hour ye serve me as I will-- Till from forgotten dust I serve the men that come.