by Kenneth Boulding (1940)

I feel hate rising in my throat.
Nay—on a flood of hate I float.
My mooring lost, my anchor gone,
I cannot steer by star or sun.

Black are the fountains of my soul
And red the slime on which they roll.

I hate! I hate! I hate! I hate!
I hate this thrice-accursed State,
I’ll smash each bloodshot German face
That travesties the human race!

Hatred and sorrow murder me.
But out of blackness, bright I see
Our Blessed Lord upon his cross.
His mouth moves wanly, wry with loss
Of blood and being, pity-drained.
Between the thieves alone he reigned:
(Was this one I, and that one you?)
“If I forgive, will ye not too?”

The vial of wrath breaks suddenly,
And fear and hate drain from me dry.
There is a glory in this place:
My Lord! I see thee face to face.


Kenneth’s son, Russell, has written of the time this poem was written:

“The atrocities of Nazism in Europe tested Kenneth’s pacifism to almost the breaking point when in May 1940 he felt almost overwhelmed by hate. Russell, as a young man remembers Kenneth recounting the experience. While bathing he was filled with a feeling of unbearable hatred, then as if a plug was pulled from a water-filled bathtub it drained away. According to Cynthia Kerman (The Life & Thought of Kenneth Boulding, 1974, p. 119):

Something broke in on him, an experiencing, almost a vision, of the suffering that Christ had taken on himself for people no better than the Germans, no better than the Bouldings.

He described the experience in this poem, first published in The Friend, the periodical of Philadelphia YM (Orthodox) in 1940.

For the rest of Kenneth’s life his pacifism only grew stronger as threats such as nuclear war and modern warfare provided further evidence that his convictions were correct—war was never a solution.”

Excerpted from “Kenneth & Elise Boulding: The Quaker Foundations of their Contributions to the Social Sciences“, by Robert H. Scott, III, and J. Russell Boulding. This chapter was part of Quakers, Politics, and Economics: Quakers in the Disciplines, V. 5, Friends Association for Higher Education, Philadelphia.