The misdemeanors of uncounted time;

We suffer in the foolishness and sins

Of races just behind us,—burn with shame

At their gross ignorance and murderous deeds;

We suffer back of them in the long years

Of squalid struggling savagery of beasts,—

Beasts human and subhuman; back of them

In helpless creatures eaten, hunted, torn;

In submerged forests dying in the slime;

And even back of that in endless years