We call them dumb—yet daily there uprise
A million piteous calls of agony,
Pleadings for peace and to be let alone;
For every inch of earth there is a moan,
Through all the air athwart the land or sea,
God, how the wailings storm the very skies!

Call them not dumb until the master, man,
Slow-taught by fellow-feeling, learns to give
Each humblest creature in the Mystic Plan
The privilege of breath, the chance to live:
Then haply shall the clamor die away,
Lost in the love of that diviner day.