In shadowed vales where no Redeemer trod,
Yet common grace still scatters seeds of good,
Man bears the image, marred but not erased,
And often walks with noble heart and mood.
He loves his children, tends the wounded beast,
Gives alms in secret, risks his life for friend;
Yet in his breast the ancient serpent’s yeast
Still works unseen, and waits its fatal end.

Without the Cross, the soul retains its spark—
Bright deeds of mercy, courage, truth, and art—
But lacks the root that holds it through the dark,
The living Vine that binds the fractured heart.
Thus cruelty, though not in every breast,
Finds easier soil where Christ is not enthroned;
It wears a thousand faces, finely dressed,
In systems cold where love is never owned.

Behold the cultured man of gentle speech,
Who weeps at poetry and feeds the poor,
Yet votes for laws that grind the helpless each,
Or turns away when conscience knocks his door.
The tender mother, fierce in love’s employ,
May still despise the stranger at her gate;
The honest scholar, seeker after joy,
May justify the scaffold and the hate.

O complex race! Half angel, half in chains—
Thou buildest hospitals, yet prisons too;
Thou singest ballads sweet of soft refrains,
Then march to war with hymns of vengeance new.
Thou pitiest horses, dogs, and woodland deer,
Yet traffic souls for pleasure or for gain;
Thou speakest peace, yet harbor secret fear
That turns to cruelty when loss brings pain.

Not every soul without the Savior’s name
Is brute or tyrant walking earth’s sad sod;
Yet all, unanchored, drift toward the same
Slow-cooling love, the gradual death of God.
For conscience fades when not renewed by grace,
And self becomes the measure and the law;
The kinder heart grows weary in the race,
And turns at last to serve its hidden flaw.

Thus shines a twilight beauty, real yet frail,
A borrowed light that glimmers, then grows dim;
Till Christ restore the heart that will not fail,
And flood with dawn what now is veiled and grim.
O fallen race, in whom such glories dwell,
Yet chained to shadows deeper than we see—
Come to the Lamb whose mercy cannot fail,
Lest even thy kindness prove a gilded tree.