The song I learnt in my maidenhood.

XXXVI.

I bore it on through the forest . . . on:

I am black, I am black;

And now I cry who am but one,

Ye blessed in freedoms evermore.

And God was thanked for liberty.

XIII.

I am black, I am black!--

Ye pilgrim-souls, . . . though plain as this!

O slaves, and end what I begun!

About our souls in care and cark

XXIII.

To bless them from the fear and doubt,

While HE sees gaping everywhere

Until all ended for the best:

As white as the ladies who scorned to pray

I look on the sea and the sky!

He must have cast His work away

X.

On my soul like his lash . . . or worse!

The poor souls crouch so far behind,

And still Gods sunshine and His frost,

They freed the white childs spirit so.

They dragged him . . . where ? . . . I crawled to touch

The forests arms did round us shut,

I bend my knee down on this mark . . .

Thus we went moaning, child and mother,

From the white mans house, and the black mans hut,

We had no claim to love and bliss:

You have killed the black eagle at nest, I think:

Which would be, if, from this low place,

But we who are dark, we are dark!

Did point and mock at what was done.

He struck them out, as it was meet,

And from that hour our spirits grew

I look at the sky and the sea.

They asked no question as I went,--

And no better a liberty sought.

The seven wounds in Christs body fair;

I.

More, then, alive, than now he does

In the sunny ground between the canes,

Could the weep-poor-will or the cat of the glen

His little feet that never grew--

Where the drivers drove, and looked at me--

. . . I know where. Close! a child and mother

XI.

On all His children 九-九-藏-书-网fatherly,

To join the souls of both of us.

Ha, ha! he wanted his master right.

Our countless wounds that pay no debt.

I fall, I swoon! I look at the sky:

XXVII.

And lift my black face, my black hand,

And round me and round me ye go!

VII.

I scooped a hole beneath the moon.

I stand on the mark beside the shore

I wish you, who stand there five a-breast,

And plucked my fruit to make them wine,

XXIX.

They stood too high for astonishment,--

Under the feet of His white creatures,

And when I felt it was tired at last,

And sucked the soul of that child of mine,

But I dared not sing to the white-faced child

We were black, we were black!

Nearest the secret of Gods power, . . .

I sang his name instead of a song;

His bloods mark in the dust! . . . not much,

Up to the mountains, lift your hands,

Our wounds are different. Your white men

He moaned and beat with his head and feet,

Ah, God, we have no stars!

I am black, you see,--

I sang it low, that the slave-girls near

Theres a little dark bird sits and sings;

I covered his face in close and tight:

(Stand off!) we help not in our loss!

Against my heart to break it through.

Theres a dark stream ripples out of sight;

XIV.

Oer the face of the darkest night.

Of the first white pilgrims bended knee,

And the beasts and birds, in wood and fold,

In my broken hearts disdain!

Through the forest-tops the angels far,

And the dark frogs chant in the safe morass,

Keep off! I brave you all at once--

XX.

Each loathing each: and all forget

I sate down smiling there and sung

Where exile turned to ancestor,

My own, own child! I could not bear

And it lay on my heart lｗｗw•９9lｉb•ｎetike a stone . . . as chill.

Might never guess from aught they could hear,

What marvel, if each turned to lack?

A little corpse as safely at rest

One to another, one to another,

I am black, I am black!--

Some comfort, and my heart grew young:

I throw off your eyes like snakes that sting!

In undertone to the oceans roar;

O pilgrim-souls, I speak to you!

V.

The masters look, that used to fall

I only cursed them all around,

For hark ! I will tell you low . . . Iow . . .

O pilgrims, I have gasped and run

A dark child in the dark,--ensued

XXVIII.

That never a comfort can they find

With a look of scorn,--that the dusky features

Earth, twixt me and my baby, strewed,

Might be trodden again to clay.

XVIII.

For one of my colour stood in the track

We did not mind, we went one way,

I am cold, though it happened a month ago.

Ye are born of the Washington-race:

For, as I sang it, soft and wild

I felt, beside, a stiffening cold, . . .

As mine in the mangos!--Yes, but she

By reaching through the prison-bars.

To be glad and merry as light.

For in this UNION, you have set

White men, I leave you all curse-free

You think I shrieked then? Not a sound!

How wilt Thou speak to-day?--

Till, after a time, he lay instead

I might have sung and made him mild--

He shivered from head to foot;

Wet eyes!--it was too merciful

Could a slave look so at another slave?--

All, changed to black earth, . . . nothing white, . . .

Indeed, we live beneath the sky, . . .

Do wrong to look at one another,

In the death-dark where we may kiss and agree,

When one is black and one is fair.

Thou９9liｂ•ｎｅtgh nothing didst Thou say.

IV.

My various notes; the same, the same!

XXXV.

With a white sharp finger from every star,

Do good with bleeding. We who bleed . . .

And thus we two were reconciled,

That great smooth Hand of God, stretched out

Why, in that single glance I had

But my fruit . . . ha, ha!--there, had been

But, once, I laughed in girlish glee;

Each, for his own wifes joy and gift,

Of libertys exquisite pain--

All opened straight up to His face

I look on the sky and the sea--

Mere griefs too good for such as I.

XVII.

Yes, two, O God, who cried to Thee,

For the white child wanted his liberty--

The white child and black mother, thus:

Here, in your names, to curse this land

I twisted it round in my shawl.

My face is black, but it glares with a scorn

Who in your names works sin and woe.

While others shook, he smiled in the hut

And he moaned and struggled, as well might be,

They could see God sit on His throne.

Are, after all, not gods indeed,

(I laugh to think ont at this hour! . . .)

He could not see the sun, I swear,

The only song I knew.

XXIV.

VIII.

The drivers drove us day by day;

Over and over I sang his name--

XXXIV.

I hung, as a gourd hangs in the sun.

And the babe who lay on my bosom so,

Of my childs face, . . . I tell you all,

I said not a word, but, day and night,

Rose from the grave whereon I sate!

My very own child!--From these sands

May keep live babies on her knee,

I carried the little body on,

We were two to love, and two to pray,--

In the name of the white child, waiting for me

From between the roots of the mango . . . where

XXV.

But the pilgrim-ghosts have slid away

I see you stawww.99lib.netring in my face--

Two kinds of men in adverse rows,

XXXI.

To let me weep pure tears and die.

I am floated along, as if I should die

Though my tears had washed a place for my knee.

As in lifting a leaf of the mango-fruit.

They wrung my cold hands out of his,--

I carried the body to and fro;

To conquer the world, we thought!

The free sun rideth gloriously;

Through the roar of the hurricanes.

I know you, staring, shrinking back--

Where the pilgrims ships first anchored lay,

And the sweetest stars are made to pass

XXI.

I wore a child upon my breast

Ha, ha, for the trick of the angels white!

XXX.

Which they dare not meet by day.

XII.

XXII.

To strangle the sob of my agony.

XXVI.

Your fine white angels, who have seen

The clouds are breaking on my brain;

Did you never stand still in your triumph, and shrink

I dared to lift up just a fold . . .

As free as if unsold, unbought:

It was only a name.

I pulled the kerchief very close:

I heard how he vowed it fast:

Nor able to make Christs again

XIX.

I saw a look that made me mad . . .

And thus I thought that I would come

And he moaned and trembled from foot to head,

So the white men brought the shame ere long

It was the dead child singing that,

(Man, drop that stone you dared to lift!--)

Oh, strong enough, since we were two

Too suddenly still and mute.

Ah, ah! they are on me--they hunt in a ring--

Look into my eyes and be bold?

Ropes tied me up here to the flogging-place.

As softly as I might have done

XVI.

As the humming-bird sucks the soul of the flower.

XV.

Wrong, followed by a deeper wrong!

IX.

They would not leav九九藏书e me for my dull

Ah!--in their stead, their hunter sons!

As he carved me a bowl of the cocoa-nut,

Coldly Thou satst behind the sun!

I look on the sky and the sea.

Yet when it was all done aright, . . .

And feel your souls around me hum

And yet God made me, they say.

From the stroke of her wounded wing?

I have run through the night, my skin is as dark,

I see you come out proud and slow

And so, to save it from my curse,

He said "I love you" as he passed:

Through the earliest streaks of the morn.

Into the grand eternity.

But if He did so, smiling back

As if we were not black and lost:

Our blackness shuts like prison bars:

They make us hot, they make us cold,

And tender and full was the look he gave:

We are too heavy for our cross,

Was far too white . . . too white for me;

I am not mad: I am black.

My little body, kerchiefed fast,

And, in my unrest, could not rest:

The same song, more melodious,

II.

Beside me at church but yesterday;

Whips, curses; these must answer those!

To look in his face, it was so white.

XXXll.

And kneel here where I knelt before,

And this mark on my wrist . . . (I prove what I say)

I covered him up with a kerchief there;

Upward and downward I drew it along

XXXIII.

And sing the song she liketh best.

All night long from the whips of one

III.

When the shingle-roof rang sharp with the rains,

And silence through the trees did run:

VI.

An amulet that hung too slack,

Do fear and take us for very men!

--The sun may shine out as much as he will:

From the land of the spirits pale as dew. . .

And this land is the free America:

And fall and crush you and your seed.

And yet He has made dark things