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 mangles!-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

seed.

XXXVI.

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!

HECTOR IN THE GARDEN.

I.

NINE years old! The first of any

Seem the happiest years that come:— Yet when I was nine, I said

No such word!-I thought, instead,

That the Greeks had used as many

In besieging Ilium.

II.

Nine green years had scarcely brought me
To my childhood's haunted spring:-
I had life, like flowers and bees,
In betwixt the country trees;
And the sun, the pleasure, taught me
Which he teacheth every thing.

III.

If the rain fell, there was sorrow ;-
Little head, leant on the pane,
Little finger drawing down it
The long trailing drops upon it,-
And the "Rain, rain, come to-morrow,"
Said for charm against the rain.

IV.

Such a charm was right Canidian,
Though you meet it with a jeer!
If I said it long enough,

Then the rain hummed dimly off,
And the thrush, with his pure Lydian,
Was left only, to the ear:

V.

And the sun and I together
Went a-rushing out of doors:
We, our tender spirits, drew
Over hill and dale in view,
Glimmering hither, glimmering thither,
In the footsteps of the showers.

VI

Underneath the chestnuts dripping,
Through the grasses wet and fair,
Straight I sought my garden-ground,
With the laurel on the mound,
And the pear-tree oversweeping
A side-shadow of green air.

VII.

In the garden, lay supinely

A huge giant, wrought of spade!
Arms and legs were stretched at length,

In a passive giant strength,—

And the meadow turf, cut finely,

Round them laid and interlaid.