Then gaily I reach up from my shroud, And you, glory-clad, reach down.

But I can wait the seven of moons, Or years I spare, Hoarding the heart’s plenty, nor spend A drop, nor share— So long but outlives a smile and A silken gown;

Sure and strong, mate for mate, such Love as culture fears; I gave you clear the oil and wine; You saved me your hob and hearth— See how even life may be ere the Sickle comes and leaves a swath.

I cannot love them; and you, oh, Seven-fold months in Flanders slain!

That my all was only worth at all, what Joy to you it gave.

I cannot love them; and I feel your glad Chiding from the grave,

Though rank and fierce the mariner Sailing the seven seas, He prays, as he holds his glass to his eyes, Coaxing the Pleiades.

The fiery wattles of the sun startle into flame The marbled towers of Shushan: So at each day’s wane, two peers—the one in Heaven, the other on earth—welcome with their        15 Splendor the peerless beauty of the Queen.  

The fiery wattles of the sun startle into flame

Tell yet what range in color wakes the eye; Sorcerer, release the dreams born here when        5 Drowsy, shifting palm-shade enspells the brain; And sound! ye with harp and flute ne’er essay Before these star-noted birds escaped from paradise awhile to Stir all dark, and dear, and passionate desire, till mine Arms go out to be mocked by the softly kissing body of the wind—        10 Slave, send Vashti to her King!

Love is but desire and thy purpose fulfillment;        40 I, thy King, so say!

I, thy lord, like not manna for meat as a Judahn; I, thy master, drink, and red wine, plenty, and when        35 I thirst. Eat meat, and full, when I hunger. I, thy King, teach you and leave you, when I list. No woman in all Persia sets out strange action To confuse Persia’s lord—

Have him ’maze how you say love is sacrament;        30 How says Vashti, love is both bread and wine; How to the altar may not come to break and drink, Hulky flesh nor fleshly spirit!

And I am hard to force the petals wide; And you are fast to suffer and be sad.

Or lift me high to the magnet of a gaze, dusky, Like the pool when but the moon-ray strikes to its depth; Or closer press to crush a grape ’gainst lips redder Than the grape, a rose in the night of her hair; Then—Sharon’s Rose in my arms.

Cushioned at the Queen’s feet and upon her knee Finding glory for mine head,—still, nearly shamed Am I, the King, to bend and kiss with sharp Breath the olive-pink of sandaled toes between;

Before the Feast of Shushan

And God walked, and where he trod His footsteps hollowed the valleys out And bulged the mountains up.

Are you not from    That docile, child-like, tender-hearted race    Which we have known three centuries? Not from    That more than faithful race which through three wars    Fed our dear wives and nursed our helpless babes  

So sadly goes my heart, Unclothed of hope and peace; It asks not joy again, But only seeks release.

Like to an ash–stained hearth When all its fires are spent;

I used at first to hope, But hope is past and, gone; And now without a ray My cheerless life drags on.

Life’s music beats for me A melancholy strain.

You say that I should smile And drive the gloom away; I would, but sun and smiles Have left my life’s dark day.

You bid me hold my peace And dry my fruitless tears, Forgetting that I bear A pain beyond my years.

Worn Out

Go on and up! Our souls and eyes Shall follow thy continuous rise; Our ears shall list thy story From bards who from thy root shall spring, and proudly tune their lyres to sing Of Ethiopia's glory.

No other race, when free again, Forgot the past and proved them men So noble in forgiving.

Be proud, my race, in mind and soul; Thy name is writ on Glory's scroll In characters of fire. High 'mid the clouds of Fame's bright sky Thy banner's blazoned folds now fly, And truth shall lift them higher.

The plant of freedom upward sprung, And spred its leaves so fresh and young— Its blossoms now are blowing.

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,     When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,— When he beats his bars and he would be free; It is not a carol of joy or glee,     But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,    But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings— I know why the caged bird sings!

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!     When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;    When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,    And the river flows like a stream of glass;     When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,    And the faint perfume from its chalice steals— I know what the caged bird feels!

Sympathy

For I feel his curse as a haunted bough,    On the trunk of a haunted tree.

And never more shall leaves come forth    On the bough that bears the ban; I am burned with dread, I am dried and dead,    From the curse of a guiltless man.

Oh, the judge, he wore a mask of black,

Oh, foolish man, why weep you now?    'Tis but a little space, And the time will come when these shall dread    The mem'ry of your face.

I feel the rope against my bark,    And the weight of him in my grain, I feel in the throe of his final woe    The touch of my own last pain.

"From those who ride fast on our heels    With mind to do him wrong; They have no care for his innocence,    And the rope they bear is long."

They'd charged him with the old, old crime,    And set him fast in jail: Oh, why does the dog howl all night long,    And why does the night wind wail?

I bent me down to hear his sigh;    I shook with his gurgling moan, And I trembled sore when they rode away,    And left him here alone.

My leaves were green as the best, I trow,    And sap ran free in my veins, But I saw in the moonlight dim and weird    A guiltless victim's pains.

Pray why are you so bare, so bare,    Oh, bough of the old oak-tree; And why, when I go through the shade you throw,    Runs a shudder over me?

The Haunted Oak

I wonder could she have been thinking the same

She turned from the sea with a woman’s grace, And the light fell soft on her upturned face, And I thought of the flood–tide of infinite bliss That would flow to my heart from a single kiss.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries To thee from tortured souls arise. We sing, but oh the clay is vile Beneath our feet, and long the mile; But let the world dream otherwise,        We wear the mask!

Why should the world be over-wise, In counting all our tears and sighs? Nay, let them only see us, while        We wear the mask.

This debt we pay to human guile; With torn and bleeding hearts we smile, And mouth with myriad subtleties.

We wear the mask that grins and lies, It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,—

crushed loveliness has always lived in my memory.

Far away in a distant city, a man, carelessly looking among some papers,[Pg 17] turned over a faded bunch of flowers tied with a blue ribbon and a lock of hair. He paused meditatively awhile, then turning to the regal-looking woman lounging before the fire, he asked: "Wife, did you ever send me these?" She raised her great, black eyes to his with a gesture of ineffable disdain, and replied languidly: "You know very well I can't bear flowers. How could I ever send such sentimental trash to any one? Throw them into the fire." And the Easter bells chimed a solemn requiem as the flames slowly licked up the faded violets. Was it merely fancy on the wife's part, or did the husband really sigh,—a long, quivering breath of remembrance?[Pg 18] THREE THOUGHTS.

Slender, white fingers, idle now, they that had never known rest; locked softly over a bunch of violet

Some whispered that a broken heart had ceased to flutter in that still, young form, and that it was a mercy for the soul to ascend on the slender sunbeam. To-day she kneels at the throne of heaven, where one year ago she had communed at an earthly altar. III.

The Song of the Smoke

I whiten my black men—I blacken my white!

I will be black as blackness can— The blacker the mantle, the mightier the man!

Here we have brought our three gifts and mingled them with yours: a gift of story and song—soft, stirring melody in an ill–harmonized and unmelodious land; the gift of sweat and brawn to beat back the wilderness, conquer the soil, and lay the foundations of this vast economic empire two hundred years earlier than your weak hands could have done it; the third, a gift of the Spirit.

Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless justice in some fair world beyond. But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins. Is such a hope justified? Do the Sorrow Songs sing true?

Yet the soul–hunger is there, the restlessness of the savage, the wail of the wanderer, and the plaint is put in one little phrase: My soul wants something that's new, that's new

Purely secular songs are few in number, partly because many of them were turned into hymns by a change of words, partly because the frolics were seldom heard by the stranger, and the music less often caught.

The first is African music, the second Afro–American, while the third is a blending of Negro music with the music heard in the foster land

You may bury me in the East, You may bury me in the West, But I'll hear the trumpet sound in that morning," —the voice of exile.

They are the music of an unhappy people, of the children of disappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longing toward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways.

Then they went, fighting cold and starvation, shut out of hotels, and cheerfully sneered at, ever northward; and ever the magic of their song kept thrilling hearts, until a burst of applause in the Congregational Council at Oberlin revealed them to the world. They came to New York and Henry Ward Beecher dared to welcome them, even though the metropolitan dailies sneered at his "Nigger Minstrels." So their songs conquered till they sang across the land and across the sea, before Queen and Kaiser, in Scotland and Ireland, Holland and Switzerland. Seven years they sang, and brought back a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to found Fisk University.

But the world listened only half credulously until the Fisk Jubilee Singers sang the slave songs so deeply into the world's heart that it can never wholly forget them again.

it still remains as the singular spiritual heritage of the nation and the greatest gift of the Negro people.

Little of beauty has America given the world save the rude grandeur God himself stamped on her bosom

Out of them rose for me morning, noon, and night, bursts of wonderful melody, full of the voices of my brothers and sisters, full of the voices of the past.

Ever since I was a child these songs have stirred me strangely. They came out of the South unknown to me, one by one, and yet at once I knew them as of me and of mine.

a haunting echo of these weird old songs in which the soul of the black slave spoke to men.

And my soul and thy soul shall meet that day,

I'll lie in the grave and stretch out my arms,

I know moon–rise, I know star–rise; I walk in the moonlight, I walk in the starlight

Well this story has no moral And this story has got no end Well the story just goes to show you women That there ain’t no good in men He was her man, but he done her wrong

   Proceed, great chief, with virtue on thy side,Thy ev'ry action let the Goddess guide.A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine,With gold unfading, WASHINGTON! Be thine.

Fix'd are the eyes of nations on the scales,For in their hopes Columbia's arm prevails.

   Muse! Bow propitious while my pen relatesHow pour her armies through a thousand gates,As when Eolus heaven's fair face deforms,Enwrapp'd in tempest and a night of storms;Astonish'd ocean feels the wild uproar,The refluent surges beat the sounding shore;Or think as leaves in Autumn's golden reign,Such, and so many, moves the warrior's train.In bright array they seek the work of war,Where high unfurl'd the ensign waves in air.Shall I to Washington their praise recite?Enough thou know'st them in the fields of fight.Thee, first in peace and honors—we demandThe grace and glory of thy martial band.Fam'd for thy valour, for thy virtues more,Hear every tongue thy guardian aid implore!

   The Goddess comes, she moves divinely fair,Olive and laurel binds Her golden hair:Wherever shines this native of the skies,Unnumber'd charms and recent graces rise.

golden r

   The Goddess comes, she moves divinely fair,Olive and laurel binds Her golden hair:Wherever shines this native of the skies,Unnumber'd charms and recent graces rise

They chill the tides of Fancy's flowing sea,Cease then, my song, cease the unequal lay.

uch is thy pow'r, nor are thine orders vain,O thou the leader of the mental train:In full perfection all thy works are wrought,And thine the sceptre o'er the realms of thought.Before thy throne the subject-passions bow,Of subject-passions sov'reign ruler thou;At thy command joy rushes on the heart,And through the glowing veins the spirits dart.

And all the forest may with leaves be crown'd:Show'rs may descend, and dews their gems disclose,And nectar sparkle on the blooming rose.

Sylvanus

Flora

Though Winter frowns to Fancy's raptur'd eyesThe fields may flourish, and gay scenes arise;The frozen deeps may break their iron bands,And bid their waters murmur o'er the sands.Fair Flora may resume her fragrant reign,And with her flow'ry riches deck the plain;Sylvanus may diffuse his honours round,And all the forest may with leaves be crown'd:Show'rs may descend, and dews their gems disclose,And nectar sparkle on the blooming rose.

Fancy's raptur'd eyes

Imagination! who can sing thy force?Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?Soaring through air to find the bright abode,Th' empyreal palace of the thund'ring God,We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,And leave the rolling universe behind:From star to star the mental optics rove,Measure the skies, and range the realms above.There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,Or with new worlds amaze th' unbounded soul.

And soft captivity involves the mind.

refulgent

ll attest how potent is thine hand.

Thy various works, imperial queen, we see,