XXI.

Why, in that single glance I had

Of my child's face, . . . I tell you all,

I saw a look that made me mad

The master's look, that used to fall
On my soul like his lash . . . or worse!
And so, to save it from my curse,

I twisted it round in my shawl.

XXII.

And he moaned and trembled from foot to head,

He shivered from head to foot;

Till, after a time, he lay instead

Too suddenly still and mute.

I felt, beside, a stiffening cold,
I dared to lift up just a fold.

As in lifting a leaf of the mango-fruit.

XXIII.

But my fruit . . . ha, ha !—there, had been (I laugh to think on't at this hour! .) Your fine white angels, who have seen

Nearest the secret of God's power,

And plucked my fruit to make them wine,
And sucked the soul of that child of mine,

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

XXIV.

Ha, ha, for the trick of the angels white!
They freed the white child's spirit so.
I said not a word, but, day and night,
I carried the body to and fro;

And it lay on my heart like a stone.

as chill.

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

I am cold, though it happened a month ago.

XXV.

From the white man's house, and the black man's hut,

I carried the little body on,

The forest's arms did round us shut,

And silence through the trees did run:

They asked no question as I went,--
They stood too high for astonishment,-
They could see God sit on His throne.

XXVI.

My little body, kerchiefed fast,

I bore it on through the forest . . . on: And when I felt it was tired at last,

I scooped a hole beneath the moon. Through the forest-tops the angels far, With a white sharp finger from every star, Did point and mock at what was done.

XXVII.

Yet when it was all done aright,

...

Earth, 'twixt me and my baby, strewed,

...

All, changed to black earth, . . . nothing white, ... A dark child in the dark,-ensued

Some comfort, and my heart grew young:

I sate down smiling there and sung

The song I learnt in my maidenhood.

XXVIII.

And thus we two were reconciled,

The white child and black mother, thus:

For, as I sang it, soft and wild

The same song, more melodious,

Rose from the grave whereon I sate!

It was the dead child singing that,

To join the souls of both of us.

XXIX.

I look on the sea and the sky!

Where the pilgrims' ships first anchored lay, The free sun rideth gloriously;

But the pilgrim-ghosts have slid away Through the earliest streaks of the morn. My face is black, but it glares with a scorn Which they dare not meet by day.

XXX.

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

Ah, ah! they are on me-they hunt in a ringKeep off! I brave you all at once

I throw off your eyes like snakes that sting! You have killed the black eagle at nest, I think : Did you never stand still in your triumph, and shrink From the stroke of her wounded wing?

XXXI.

(Man, drop that stone you dared to lift !—)
I wish you, who stand there five a-breast,
Each, for his own wife's joy and gift,
A little corpse as safely at rest
As mine in the mangos !-Yes, but she
May keep live babies on her knee,
And sing the song she liketh best.

XXXII.

I am not mad: I am black.

I see you staring in my face-
I know you, staring, shrinking back-
Ye are born of the Washington-race :

And this land is the free America :

And this mark on my wrist . . . (I prove what I say) Ropes tied me up here to the flogging-place,

XXXIII.

You think I shrieked then? Not a sound!
I hung, as a gourd hangs in the sun.
I only cursed them all around,

As softly as I might have done
My very own child!—From these sands
Up to the mountains, lift your hands,
O slaves, and end what I begun!

XXXIV.

Whips, curses; these must answer those!
For in this UNION, you have set
Two kinds of men in adverse rows,
Each loathing each: and all forget

The seven wounds in Christ's body fair;
While He sees gaping everywhere
Our countless wounds that pay no debt.

XXXV.

Our wounds are different.

Your white men

Are, after all, not gods indeed,

Nor able to make Christs again

Do good with bleeding. We who bleed... (Stand off!) we help not in our loss!

We are too heavy for our cross,
And fall and crush you and your

XXXVI.

seed.

I fall, I swoon! I look at the sky:
The clouds are breaking on my brain ;
I am floated along, as if I should die

Of liberty's exquisite pain

In the name of the white child, waiting for me
In the death-dark where we may kiss and agree,
White men, I leave you all curse-free

In my broken heart's disdain !

Do

ye

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN.

σε φεῦ, φεῦ, τι προσδέρκεσθε μ' ομμασιν, τεκνα.”—MEDEA.

I.

hear the children weeping, O my brothers,
Ere the sorrow comes with years?

They are leaning their young heads against their mothers,→

And that cannot stop their tears.

The young lambs are bleating in the meadows;
The young birds are chirping in the nest;
The young fawns are playing with the shadows;
The young flowers are blowing toward the west-
But the young, young children, O my brothers,
They are weeping bitterly!—

They are weeping in the playtime of the others,
In the country of the free.

II.

Do you question the young children in the sorrow,
Why their tears are falling so?—

The old man may weep for his to-morrow
Which is lost in Long Ago-

The old tree is leafless in the forest-
The old year is ending in the frost-
The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest-
The old hope is hardest to be lost :

But the young, young children, O my brothers,
Do you ask them why they stand

Weeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,
In our happy Fatherland?

III.

They look up with their pale and sunken faces,
And their looks are sad to see,

For the man's grief abhorrent, draws and presses
Down the cheeks of infancy—

"Your old earth," they say, "is very dreary;'
"Our young feet," they say, are very weak!
Few paces have we taken, yet are weary—
Our grave-rest is very far to seek.

Ask the old why they weep, and not the children,
For the outside earth is cold,—

And we young ones stand without, in our bewildering,
And the graves are for the old.

IV.

"True," say the young children, "it may happen
That we die before our time.

Little Alice died last year-the grave is shapen
Like a snowball, in the rime.

We looked into the pit prepared to take her-
Was no room for any work in the close clay:
From the sleep wherein she lieth none will wake her,
Crying, 'Get up, little Alice! it is day.'

If you listen by that grave, in sun and shower,

With your ear down, little Alice never cries!

Could we see her face, be sure we should not know her, For the smile has time for growing in her eyes,—