O Carpenter of Nazareth,
A grim true word it was You said
That night beneath the olive-shade,
That to each worker cometh death,
Too often by the tools of his own trade.

You said, O Carpenter, this hard word:
“Who takes the sword dies by the sword.”
Each man by his own labor perishes:
The fisherman becomes the food of fishes;
The Carpenter is nailed upon a board.

All sailors fallen from the swaying mast,
Their bloody flesh and brains buttering the deck;
And stokers stifled by the furnace blast,
Half burned, half drowned like rats in some steel-stanchioned wreck.

All soldiers hanging gutted on the wire
Or firemen strangled in a noose of fire;
Masons and muckers crashing through the broken scaffolding
That props the palace of some careless King
Of Church or Trade;

And they who ride the smoky stallions unafraid,
Mangled and roasting in each wrecked and burning train;
Miners in agonizing darkness gassed
Or crushed beneath an avalanche of coal—

We pray, O Carpenter, nail-slain,
To Thee, Who knew the labor and the pain,
Be gracious to each parting soul!

But most, for our own selves we pray,
Even that we may be forgiven too
For these we slay by night and day,
Although we know well what we do.