The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Volume 2

THE RUNAWAY SLAVE AT PILGRIM'S POINT

II stand on the mark beside the shoreOf 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.IIO pilgrim-souls, I speak to you!I see you come proud and slowFrom the land of the spirits pale as dewAnd round me and round me ye go.O pilgrims, I have gasped and runAll night long from the whips of oneWho in your names works sin and woe!IIIAnd thus I thought that I would comeAnd kneel here where ye knelt before,And feel your souls around me humIn undertone to the ocean's roar;And lift my black face, my black hand,Here, in your names, to curse this landYe blessed in freedom's, evermore.IVI am black, I am black,And yet God made me, they say:But if He did so, smiling backHe must have cast his work awayUnder the feet of his white creatures,With a look of scorn, that the dusky featuresMight be trodden again to clay.VAnd yet He has made dark thingsTo 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 passO'er the face of the darkest night.VIBut we who are dark, we are dark!Ah God, we have no stars!About our souls in care and carkOur blackness shuts like prison-bars:The poor souls crouch so far behindThat never a comfort can they findBy reaching through the prison-bars.VIIIndeed we live beneath the sky,That great smooth Hand of God stretched outOn all His children fatherly,To save them from the dread and doubtWhich would be if, from this low place,All opened straight up to His faceInto the grand eternity.VIIIAnd 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 whip-poor-will or the cat of the glenLook into my eyes and be bold?IXI am black, I am black!But, once, I laughed in girlish glee,For one of my colour stood in the trackWhere the drivers drove, and looked at me,And tender and full was the look he gave —Could a slave look so at another slave? —I look at the sky and the sea.XAnd from that hour our spirits grewAs 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.XIIn the sunny ground between the canes,He said "I love you" as he passed;When the shingle-roof rang sharp with the rains,I heard how he vowed it fast:While others shook he smiled in the hut,As he carved me a bowl of the cocoa-nutThrough the roar of the hurricanes.XIII sang his name instead of a song,Over and over I sang his name,Upward and downward I drew it alongMy various notes, – the same, the same!I sang it low, that the slave-girls nearMight never guess, from aught they could hear,It was only a name – a name.XIIII look on the sky and the sea.We were two to love, and two to pray:Yes, two, O God, who cried to Thee,Though nothing didst Thou say!Coldly Thou sat'st behind the sun:And now I cry who am but one,Thou wilt not speak to-day.XIVWe were black, we were black,We had no claim to love and bliss,What marvel if each went to wrack?They wrung my cold hands out of his,They dragged him – where? I crawled to touchHis blood's mark in the dust … not much,Ye pilgrim-souls, though plain as this!XVWrong, followed by a deeper wrong!Mere grief's too good for such as I:So the white men brought the shame ere longTo strangle the sob of my agony.They would not leave me for my dullWet eyes! – it was too mercifulTo let me weep pure tears and die.XVII am black, I am black!I wore a child upon my breast,An amulet that hung too slack,And, in my unrest, could not rest:Thus we went moaning, child and mother,One to another, one to another,Until all ended for the best.XVIIFor hark! I will tell you low, low,I am black, you see, —And the babe who lay on my bosom so,Was far too white, too white for me;As white as the ladies who scorned to prayBeside me at church but yesterday,Though my tears had washed a place for my knee.XVIIIMy own, own child! I could not bearTo look in his face, it was so white;I covered him up with a kerchief there,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.XIXHe 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 childThe only song I knew.XXI pulled the kerchief very close:He could not see the sun, I swear,More, then, alive, than now he doesFrom between the roots of the mango … where?I know where. Close! A child and motherDo wrong to look at one anotherWhen one is black and one is fair.XXIWhy, in that single glance I hadOf my child's face, … I tell you all,I saw a look that made me mad!The master's look, that used to fallOn my soul like his lash … or worse!And so, to save it from my curse,I twisted it round in my shawl.XXIIAnd he moaned and trembled from foot to head,He shivered from head to foot;Till after a time, he lay insteadToo 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.XXIIIBut my fruit … ha, ha! – there, had been(I laugh to think on 't at this hour!)Your fine white angels (who have seenNearest the secret of God's power)And plucked my fruit to make them wine,And sucked the soul of that child of mineAs the humming-bird sucks the soul of the flower.XXIVHa, ha, the trick of the angels white!They freed the white child's spirit so.I said not a word, but day and nightI 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.XXVFrom 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.XXVIMy 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.XXVIIYet 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! – ensuedSome comfort, and my heart grew young;I sate down smiling there and sungThe song I learnt in my maidenhood.XXVIIIAnd 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 sateIt was the dead child singing that,To join the souls of both of us.XXIXI look on the sea and the sky.Where the pilgrims' ships first anchored layThe free sun rideth gloriously,But the pilgrim-ghosts have slid awayThrough the earliest streaks of the morn:My face is black, but it glares with a scornWhich they dare not meet by day.XXXHa! – 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 shrinkFrom 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 restAs mine in the mangoes! Yes, but sheMay keep live babies on her knee,And sing the song she likes the best.XXXIII 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.XXXIIIYou think I shrieked then? Not a sound!I hung, as a gourd hangs in the sun;I only cursed them all aroundAs softly as I might have doneMy very own child: from these sandsUp to the mountains, lift your hands,O slaves, and end what I begun!XXXIVWhips, curses; these must answer those!For in this Union you have setTwo kinds of men in adverse rows,Each loathing each; and all forgetThe seven wounds in Christ's body fair,While He sees gaping everywhereOur countless wounds that pay no debt.XXXVOur wounds are different. Your white menAre, after all, not gods indeed,Nor able to make Christs againDo 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.XXXVII fall, I swoon! I look at the sky.The clouds are breaking on my brainI am floated along, as if I should dieOf liberty's exquisite pain.In the name of the white child waiting for meIn the death-dark where we may kiss and agree,White men, I leave you all curse-freeIn my broken heart's disdain!

THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN

"Φηῦ, φηῦ, τί προσδέρκεσθέ μ' ὄμμασιν, τέκνα;" – MedeaIDo 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.IIDo you question the young children in the sorrowWhy their tears are falling so?The old man may weep for his to-morrowWhich 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 standWeeping sore before the bosoms of their mothers,In our happy Fatherland?IIIThey look up with their pale and sunken faces,And their looks are sad to see,For the man's hoary anguish draws and pressesDown 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 happenThat we die before our time:Little Alice died last year, her grave is shapenLike 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 inThe shroud by the kirk-chime.It is good when it happens," say the children,"That we die before our time."VAlas, alas, the children! they are seekingDeath 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 meadowsLike 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 merelyTo 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 tiringThrough the coal-dark, underground;Or, all day, we drive the wheels of ironIn 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!'"VIIIAy, be silent! Let them hear each other breathingFor a moment, mouth to mouth!Let them touch each other's hands, in a fresh wreathingOf their tender human youth!Let them feel that this cold metallic motionIs not all the life God fashions or reveals:Let them prove their living souls against the notionThat 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.IXNow 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 usPass 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.6We 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 masterWho 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.XIIAnd well may the children weep before you!They are weary ere they run;They have never seen the sunshine, nor the gloryWhich 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 unretrievinglyThe harvest of its memories cannot reap, —Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly.Let them weep! let them weep!XIIIThey 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?Our blood splashes upward, O gold-heaper,And your purple shows your path!But the child's sob in the silence curses deeperThan the strong man in his wrath."

A CHILD ASLEEP

IHow he sleepeth, having drunkenWeary childhood's mandragore!From its pretty eyes have sunkenPleasures to make room for more;Sleeping near the withered nosegay which he pulled the day before.IINosegays! leave them for the waking;Throw them earthward where they grew;Dim are such beside the breakingAmaranths he looks unto:Folded eyes see brighter colours than the open ever do.IIIHeaven-flowers, rayed by shadows goldenFrom 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.IVVision unto vision callethWhile the young child dreameth on:Fair, O dreamer, thee befallethWith the glory thou hast won!Darker wast thou in the garden yestermorn by summer sun.VWe should see the spirits ringingRound thee, were the clouds away:'T is the child-heart draws them, singingIn the silent-seeming clay —Singing! stars that seem the mutest go in music all the way.VIAs the moths around a taper,As the bees around a rose,As the gnats around a vapour,So the spirits group and closeRound about a holy childhood as if drinking its repose.VIIShapes of brightness overlean thee,Flash their diadems of youthOn the ringlets which half screen thee,While thou smilest … not in soothThy smile, but the overfair one, dropt from some etherial mouth.VIIIHaply it is angels' duty,During slumber, shade by shadeTo fine down this childish beautyTo the thing it must be madeEre the world shall bring it praises, or the tomb shall see it fade.IXSoftly, softly! make no noises!Now he lieth dead and dumb;Now he hears the angels' voicesFolding silence in the roomNow he muses deep the meaning of the Heaven-words as they come.XSpeak not! he is consecrated;Breathe no breath across his eyes:Lifted up and separatedOn the hand of God he liesIn a sweetness beyond touching, held in cloistral sanctities.XICould ye bless him, father – mother,Bless the dimple in his cheek?Dare ye look at one anotherAnd the benediction speak?Would ye not break out in weeping and confess yourselves too weak?XIIHe is harmless, ye are sinful;Ye are troubled, he at ease;From his slumber virtue winfulFloweth outward with increase.Dare not bless him! but be blessèd by his peace, and go in peace.

THE FOURFOLD ASPECT

IWhen ye stood up in the houseWith your little childish feet,And, in touching Life's first shows,First the touch of Love did meet, —Love and Nearness seeming one,By the heartlight cast before,And of all Beloveds, noneStanding farther than the door;Not a name being dear to thought,With its owner beyond call;Not a face, unless it broughtIts own shadow to the wall;When the worst recorded changeWas of apple dropt from bough,When love's sorrow seemed more strangeThan love's treason can seem now; —Then, the Loving took you upSoft, upon their elder knees,Telling why the statues droopUnderneath the churchyard trees,And how ye must lie beneath themThrough the winters long and deep,Till the last trump overbreathe them,And ye smile out of your sleep.Oh, ye lifted up your head, and it seemed as if they saidA tale of fairy shipsWith a swan-wing for a sail;Oh, ye kissed their loving lipsFor the merry merry tale —So carelessly ye thought upon the Dead!IISoon ye read in solemn storiesOf the men of long ago,Of the pale bewildering gloriesShining farther than we know;Of the heroes with the laurel,Of the poets with the bay,Of the two worlds' earnest quarrelFor that beauteous Helena;How Achilles at the portalOf the tent heard footsteps nigh,And his strong heart, half-immortal,Met the keitai with a cry;How Ulysses left the sunlightFor the pale eidola raceBlank and passive through the dun light,Staring blindly in his face;How that true wife said to Poetus,With calm smile and wounded heart,"Sweet, it hurts not!" How AdmetusSaw his blessed one depart;How King Arthur proved his mission,And Sir Roland wound his horn,And at Sangreal's moony visionSwords did bristle round like corn.Oh, ye lifted up your head, and it seemed, the while ye read,That this Death, then, must be foundA Valhalla for the crowned,The heroic who prevail:None, be sure can enter inFar below a paladinOf a noble noble tale —So awfully ye thought upon the Dead!IIIAy, but soon ye woke up shrieking,As a child that wakes at nightFrom a dream of sisters speakingIn a garden's summer-light, —That wakes, starting up and bounding,In a lonely lonely bed,With a wall of darkness round him,Stifling black about his head!And the full sense of your mortalRushed upon you deep and loud,And ye heard the thunder hurtleFrom the silence of the cloud.Funeral-torches at your gatewayThrew a dreadful light within.All things changed: you rose up straightway,And saluted Death and Sin.Since, your outward man has rallied,And your eye and voice grown bold;Yet the Sphinx of Life stands pallid,With her saddest secret told.Happy places have grown holy:If ye went where once ye went,Only tears would fall down slowly,As at solemn sacrament.Merry books, once read for pastime,If ye dared to read again,Only memories of the last timeWould swim darkly up the brain.Household names, which used to flutterThrough your laughter unawares, —God's Divinest ye could utterWith less trembling in your prayers.Ye have dropt adown your head, and it seems as if ye treadOn your own hearts in the pathYe are called to in His wrath,And your prayers go up in wail– "Dost Thou see, then, all our loss,O Thou agonized on cross?Art thou reading all its tale?"So mournfully ye think upon the Dead!IVPray, pray, thou who also weepest,And the drops will slacken so.Weep, weep, and the watch thou keepestWith a quicker count will go.Think: the shadow on the dialFor the nature most undone,Marks the passing of the trial,Proves the presence of the sun.Look, look up, in starry passion,To the throne above the spheres:Learn: the spirit's gravitationStill must differ from the tear's.Hope: with all the strength thou usestIn embracing thy despair.Love: the earthly love thou losestShall return to thee more fair.Work: make clear the forest-tanglesOf the wildest stranger-landTrust: the blessèd deathly angelsWhisper, "Sabbath hours at hand!"By the heart's wound when most gory,By the longest agony,Smile! Behold in sudden gloryThe Transfigured smiles on thee!And ye lifted up your head, and it seemed as if He said,"My Belovèd, is it so?Have ye tasted of my woe?Of my Heaven ye shall not fail!"He stands brightly where the shade is,With the keys of Death and Hades,And there, ends the mournful tale —So hopefully ye think upon the Dead!

NIGHT AND THE MERRY MAN

NIGHT'Neath my moon what doest thou,With a somewhat paler browThan she giveth to the ocean?He, without a pulse or motion,Muttering low before her stands,Lifting his invoking handsLike a seer before a sprite,To catch her oracles of light:But thy soul out-trembles nowMany pulses on thy brow.Where be all thy laughters clear,Others laughed alone to hear?Where thy quaint jests, said for fame?Where thy dances, mixed with game?Where thy festive companies,Moonèd o'er with ladies' eyesAll more bright for thee, I trow?'Neath my moon what doest thou?THE MERRY MANI am digging my warm heartTill I find its coldest part;I am digging wide and low,Further than a spade will go,Till that, when the pit is deepAnd large enough, I there may heapAll my present pain and pastJoy, dead things that look aghastBy the daylight: now 't is done.Throw them in, by one and one!I must laugh, at rising sun.Memories – of fancy's goldenTreasures which my hands have holden,Till the chillness made them ache;Of childhood's hopes that used to wakeIf birds were in a singing strain,And for less cause, sleep again;Of the moss-seat in the woodWhere I trysted solitude;Of the hill-top where the windUsed to follow me behind,Then in sudden rush to blindBoth my glad eyes with my hair,Taken gladly in the snare;Of the climbing up the rocks,Of the playing 'neath the oaksWhich retain beneath them nowOnly shadow of the bough;Of the lying on the grassWhile the clouds did overpass,Only they, so lightly driven,Seeming betwixt me and Heaven;Of the little prayers serene,Murmuring of earth and sin;Of large-leaved philosophyLeaning from my childish knee;Of poetic book sublime,Soul-kissed for the first dear time,Greek or English, ere I knewLife was not a poem too: —Throw them in, by one and one!I must laugh, at rising sun.– Of the glorious ambitionsYet unquenched by their fruitionsOf the reading out the nights;Of the straining at mad heights;Of achievements, less descriedBy a dear few than magnified;Of praises from the many earnedWhen praise from love was undiscerned;Of the sweet reflecting gladnessSoftened by itself to sadness: —Throw them in, by one and one!I must laugh, at rising sun.What are these? more, more than these!Throw in dearer memories! —Of voices whereof but to speakMakes mine own all sunk and weak;Of smiles the thought of which is sweepingAll my soul to floods of weeping;Of looks whose absence fain would weighMy looks to the ground for aye;Of clasping hands – ah me, I wringMine, and in a tremble flingDownward, downward all this paining!Partings with the sting remaining,Meetings with a deeper throeSince the joy is ruined so,Changes with a fiery burning,(Shadows upon all the turning,)Thoughts of … with a storm they came,Them I have not breath to name:Downward, downward be they castIn the pit! and now at lastMy work beneath the moon is done,And I shall laugh, at rising sun.But let me pause or ere I coverAll my treasures darkly over:I will speak not in thine ears,Only tell my beaded tearsSilently, most silently.When the last is calmly told,Let that same moist rosaryWith the rest sepùlchred be,Finished now! The darksome mouldSealeth up the darksome pit.I will lay no stone on it,Grasses I will sow instead,Fit for Queen Titania's tread;Flowers, encoloured with the sun,And αι αι written upon none;Thus, whenever saileth byThe Lady World of dainty eye,Not a grief shall here remain,Silken shoon to damp or stain:And while she lisps, "I have not seenAny place more smooth and clean" …Here she cometh! – Ha, ha! – whoLaughs as loud as I can do?