THAT DAY.

I.

I STAND by the river where both of us stood,
And there is but one shadow to darken the flood;
And the path leading to it, where both used to pass,
Has the step but of one, to take dew from the grass,-
One forlorn since that day

II.

The flowers of the margin are many to see;
None stoops at my bidding to pluck them for me.
The bird in the alder sings loudly and long,-
My low sound of weeping disturbs not his song,
As thy vow did that day.

III.

I stand by the river-I think of the vow-
Oh, calm as the place is, vow-breaker, be thou!
I leave the flower growing, the bird, unreproved;—
Would I trouble thee rather than them, my beloved,
And my lover that day?

IV.

Go, be sure of my love-by that treason forgiven; Of my prayers-by the blessings they win thee from Heaven;

Of my grief—(guess the length of the sword by the

sheath's)

By the silence of life, more pathetic than death's! Go,-be clear of that day!

A REED.

I.

I AM no trumpet, but a reed:

No flattering breath shall from me lead
A silver sound, a hollow sound.

I will not wring, for priest or king,
One blast that in re-echoing

Would leave a bondsman faster bound.

II.

I am no trumpet, but a reed,—
A broken reed, the wind indeed
Left flat upon a dismal shore;
Yet if a little maid, or child,
Should sigh within it, earnest-mild,
This reed will answer evermore.

III.

I am no trumpet, but a reed.

Go, tell the fishers, as they spread
Their nets along the river's edge,

I will not tear their nets at all,

Nor pierce their hands, if they should fall; Then let them leave me in the sedge.

THE RUNAWAY SLAVE AT PILGRIM'S POINT.

1.

I STAND on the mark beside the shore

Of the first white pilgrim's bended knee, Where exile turned to ancestor,

And God was thanked for liberty.

I have run through the night, my skin is as dark, I bend my knee down on this mark . .

I look on the sky and the sea.

II.

O pilgrim-souls, I speak to you!

I see you come out proud and slow
From the land of the spirits pale as dew,
And round me and round me ye go!
O pilgrims, I have gasped and run
All night long from the whips of one
Who in your names works sin and woe.

III.

And thus I thought that I would come
And kneel here where ye knelt before,

And feel your souls around me hum
In undertone to the ocean's roar;

And lift my black face, my black hand,
Here, in your names, to curse this land
Ye blessed in freedom's evermore.

IV.

I am black, I am black!

And yet God made me, they say, But if He did so, smiling back

He must have cast his work away Under the feet of his white creatures, With a look of scorn,-that the dusky features Might be trodden again to clay.

V.

And yet he has made dark things
To be glad and merry as light.

There's a little dark bird, sits and sings;
There's a dark stream ripples out of sight;
And the dark frogs chant in the safe morass,
And the sweetest stars are made to pass
O'er the face of the darkest night.

VI.

But we who are dark, we are dark!
Ah God, we have no stars!
About our souls in care and cark

Our blackness shuts like prison-bars.
The poor souls crouch so far behind,
That never a comfort can they find

By reaching through the prison-bars.

VII.

Indeed we live beneath the sky,

That great smooth Hand of God stretched out

On all His children fatherly,

To save them from the dread and doubt
Which would be, if, from this low place,
All opened straight up to His face
Into the grand eternity.

VIII.

And still God's sunshine and His frost,
They make us hot, they make us cold,

As if we were not black and lost;

And the beasts and birds, in wood and fold, Do fear and take us for very men!

Could the weep-poor-will or the cat of the glen Look into my eyes and be bold?

IX.

I am black, I am black !—

But, once, I laughed in girlish glee, For one of my colour stood in the track

Where the drivers drove, and looked at me, And tender and full was the look he gaveCould a slave look so at another slave ?— I look at the sky and the sea.

X.

And from that hour our spirits grew
As free as if unsold, unbought.
Oh, strong enough, since we were two,
To conquer the world, we thought!

The drivers drove us day by day;
We did not mind, we went one way,

And no better a freedom sought.