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Complete Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Page 51

by Elizabeth Barrett Browning


  I covered his face in close and tight:

  And he moaned and struggled, as well might be,

  For the white child wanted his liberty —

  Ha, ha! he wanted the master-right.

  XIX.

  He moaned and beat with his head and feet,

  His little feet that never grew;

  He struck them out, as it was meet,

  Against my heart to break it through:

  I might have sung and made him mild,

  But I dared not sing to the white-faced child

  The only song I knew.

  XX.

  I pulled the kerchief very close:

  He could not see the sun, I swear,

  More, then, alive, than now he does

  From between the roots of the mango ... where?

  I know where. Close! A child and mother

  Do wrong to look at one another

  When one is black and one is fair.

  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, 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 aught, —

  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.

  Ha! — in their stead, their hunter sons!

  Ha, ha! they are on me — they hunt in a ring!

  Keep 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 ever 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 abreast.

  Each, for his own wife’s joy and gift,

  A little corpse as safely at rest

  As mine in the mangoes! Yes, but she

  May keep live babies on her knee,

  And sing the song she likes the 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!

  THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN.

  ~”Pheu, pheu, ti prosderkesthe m’ ommasin, tekna?”~

  — Medea.

  I.

  Do ye 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 hoary anguish 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 aged 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 children, “it may happen

  That we die before our time:

  Little Alice died last year, her 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:

  And merry go her moments, lulled and stilled in

  The shroud by the kirk-chime.

  It is good when it happens,” say the children,

  “That we die before our time.”

  V.

  Alas, alas, the children! they are seeking

  Death in life, as best to have:

  They are binding up their hearts away from breaking,

  With a cerement from the grave.

  Go out, children, from the mine and from the city,

  Sing out, children, as the little thrushes do;

  Pluck your handfuls of the meadow-cowslips pretty,

  Laugh aloud, to feel your fingers let them through!

  But they answer, “Are your cowslips of the meadows

  Like our weeds anear the mine?

  Leave us quiet in the dark of the coal-shadows,

  From your pleasures fair and fine!

  VI.

  “For oh,” say the children, “we are weary,

  And we cannot run or leap;

  If we cared for any meadows, it were merely

  To drop down in them and sleep.

  Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping,

  We fall upon our faces, trying to go;

  And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping,

  The reddest flower would look as pale as snow.

  For, all day, we drag our burden tiring

  Through the coal-dark, underground;

  Or, all day, we drive the wheels of iron

  In the factories, round and round.

  VII.

  “For all day the wheels are droning, turning;

  Their wind comes in our faces,

  Till our hearts turn, our heads with pulses burning,

  And the walls turn in their places:

  Turns the sky in the high window, blank and reeling,

  Turns the long light that drops adown the wall,

  Turn the black flies that crawl along the ceiling:

  All are turning, all the day, and we with all.

  And all day the iron wheels are droning,

  And sometimes we could pray,

  ‘O ye wheels’ (breaking out in a mad moaning),

  ‘Stop! be silent for to-day!’”

  VIII.

  Ay, be silent! Let them hear each other breathing

  For a moment, mouth to mouth!

  Let them touch each other’s hands, in a fresh wreathing

  Of their tender human youth!

  Let them feel that this cold metallic motion

  Is not all the life God fashions or reveals:

  Let them prove their living souls against the notion

  That they live in you, or under you, O wheels!

  Still, all day, the iron wheels go onward,

  Grinding life down from its mark;

  And the children’s souls, which God is calling sunward,

  Spin on blindly in the dark.

  IX.

  Now tell the poor young children, O my brothers,

  To look up to Him and pray;

  So the blessed One who blesseth all the others,

  Will bless them another day.

  They answer, “Who is God that He should hear us,

  While the rushing of the iron wheels is stirred?

  When we sob aloud, the human creatures near us

  Pass by, hearing not, or answer not a word.

  And we hear not (for the wheels in their resounding)

  Strangers speaking at the door:

  Is it likely God, with angels singing round Him,

  Hears our weeping any more?

  X.

  “Two words, indeed, of praying we remember,

  And at midnight’s hour of harm,

  ‘Our Father,’ looking upward in the chamber,

  We say softly for a charm.[6]

  We know no other words except ‘Our Father,’

  And we think that, in some pause of angels’ song,

  God may pluck them with the silence sweet to gather,

  And hold both within His right hand which is strong.

  ‘Our Father!’ If He heard us, He would surely

  (For they call Him good and mild)

  Answer, smiling down the steep world very purely,

  ‘Come and rest with me, my child.’

  XI.

  “But, no!” say the children, weeping faster,

  “He is speechless as a stone:

  And they tell us, of His image is the master

  Who commands us to work on.

  Go to!” say the children,— “up in Heaven,

  Dark, wheel-like, turning clouds are all we find.

  Do not mock us; grief has made us unbelieving:

  We look up for God, but tears have made us blind.”

  Do you hear the children weeping and disproving,

  O my brothers, what ye preach?

  For God’s possible is taught by His world’s loving,

  And the children doubt of each.

  XII.

  And well may the children weep before you!

  They are weary ere they run;

  They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory

  Which is brighter than the sun.

  They know the grief of man, without its wisdom;

  They sink in man’s despair, without its calm;

  Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom,

  Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm:

  Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly

  The harvest of its memories cannot reap, —

  Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly.

  Let them weep! let them weep!

  XIII.

  They look up with their pale and sunken faces,

  And their look is dread to see,

  For they mind you of their angels in high places,

  With eyes turned on Deity.

  “How long,” they say, “how long, O cruel nation,

  Will you stand, to move the world, on a child’s heart, —

  Stifle down with a mailed heel its palpitation,

  And tread onward to your throne amid the mart?

&n
bsp; Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,

  And your purple shows your path!

  But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper

  Than the strong man in his wrath.”

  A CHILD ASLEEP.

  I.

  How he sleepeth, having drunken

  Weary childhood’s mandragore!

  From its pretty eyes have sunken

  Pleasures to make room for more;

  Sleeping near the withered nosegay which he pulled the day before.

  II.

  Nosegays! leave them for the waking;

  Throw them earthward where they grew;

  Dim are such beside the breaking

  Amaranths he looks unto:

  Folded eyes see brighter colours than the open ever do.

  III.

  Heaven-flowers, rayed by shadows golden

  From the palms they sprang beneath,

  Now perhaps divinely holden,

  Swing against him in a wreath:

  We may think so from the quickening of his bloom and of his breath.

  IV.

  Vision unto vision calleth

  While the young child dreameth on:

  Fair, O dreamer, thee befalleth

  With the glory thou hast won!

  Darker wast thou in the garden yestermorn by summer sun.

  V.

  We should see the spirits ringing

  Round thee, were the clouds away:

  ‘T is the child-heart draws them, singing

  In the silent-seeming clay —

  Singing! stars that seem the mutest go in music all the way.

  VI.

  As the moths around a taper,

  As the bees around a rose,

  As the gnats around a vapour,

  So the spirits group and close

  Round about a holy childhood as if drinking its repose.

  VII.

 

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