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Essayed to write it out in stone, as coldAnd hard, and heartless as himself. And Israel wasThe fated race to whom the cruel tasksWere given. Day after day a cry of wrongAnd anguish, some dark deed of woe and crime,Came to the ear of Moses, and he said,"These reports are ever harrowing my soul;I will go unto the fields where Pharaoh'sOfficers exact their labors, and seeIf these things be so—if they smite the feebleAt their tasks, and goad the aged on to toilsBeyond their strength—if neither age nor sexIs spared the cruel smiting of their rods."And Moses went to see his brethren. 'Twas eventide,And the laborers were wending their wayUnto their lowly huts. 'Twas a sad sight,—The young girls walked without the bounding stepsOf youth, with faces prematurely old,As if the rosy hopes and sunny promisesOf life had never flushed their cheeks with girlishJoy; and there were men whose faces seemed to sayWe bear our lot in hopeless pain, we 've bent untoOur burdens until our shoulders fit them,And as slaves we crouch beneath our servitudeAnd toil. But there were men whose souls were castIn firmer moulds, men with dark secretive eyes,Which seemed to say, to day we bide our time,
