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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=383957" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I.<br>I stand on the mark beside the shore<br>Of the first white pilgrim's bended knee,<br>Where exile turned to ancestor,<br>And God was thanked for liberty.<br>I have run through the night, my skin is as dark,<br>I bend my knee down on this mark . . .<br>I look on the sky and the sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">II.<br>O pilgrim-souls, I speak to you!<br>I see you come out proud and slow<br>From the land of the spirits pale as dew. . .<br>And round me and round me ye go!<br>O pilgrims, I have gasped and run<br>All night long from the whips of one<br>Who in your names works sin and woe.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">III.<br>And thus I thought that I would come<br>And kneel here where I knelt before,<br>And feel your souls around me hum<br>In undertone to the ocean's roar;<br>And lift my black face, my black hand,<br>Here, in your names, to curse this land<br>Ye blessed in freedom's evermore.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IV.<br>I am black, I am black;<br>And yet God made me, they say.<br>But if He did so, smiling back<br>He must have cast His work away<br>Under the feet of His white creatures,<br>With a look of scorn,--that the dusky features<br>Might be trodden again to clay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">V.<br>And yet He has made dark things<br>To be glad and merry as light.<br>There's a little dark bird sits and sings;<br>There's a dark stream ripples out of sight;<br>And the dark frogs chant in the safe morass,<br>And the sweetest stars are made to pass<br>O'er the face of the darkest night.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VI.<br>But we who are dark, we are dark!<br>Ah, God, we have no stars!<br>About our souls in care and cark<br>Our blackness shuts like prison bars:<br>The poor souls crouch so far behind,<br>That never a comfort can they find<br>By reaching through the prison-bars.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VII.<br>Indeed, we live beneath the sky, . . .<br>That great smooth Hand of God, stretched out<br>On all His children fatherly,<br>To bless them from the fear and doubt,<br>Which would be, if, from this low place,<br>All opened straight up to His face<br>Into the grand eternity.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">VIII.<br>And still God's sunshine and His frost,<br>They make us hot, they make us cold,<br>As if we were not black and lost:<br>And the beasts and birds, in wood and fold,<br>Do fear and take us for very men!<br>Could the weep-poor-will or the cat of the glen<br>Look into my eyes and be bold?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IX.<br>I am black, I am black!--<br>But, once, I laughed in girlish glee;<br>For one of my colour stood in the track<br>Where the drivers drove, and looked at me--<br>And tender and full was the look he gave:<br>Could a slave look so at another slave?--<br>I look at the sky and the sea.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">X.<br>And from that hour our spirits grew<br>As free as if unsold, unbought:<br>Oh, strong enough, since we were two<br>To conquer the world, we thought!<br>The drivers drove us day by day;<br>We did not mind, we went one way,<br>And no better a liberty sought.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XI.<br>In the sunny ground between the canes,<br>He said 'I love you' as he passed:<br>When the shingle-roof rang sharp with the rains,<br>I heard how he vowed it fast:<br>While others shook, he smiled in the hut<br>As he carved me a bowl of the cocoa-nut,<br>Through the roar of the hurricanes.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XII.<br>I sang his name instead of a song;<br>Over and over I sang his name--<br>Upward and downward I drew it along<br>My various notes; the same, the same!<br>I sang it low, that the slave-girls near<br>Might never guess from aught they could hear,<br>It was only a name.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIII.<br>I look on the sky and the sea--<br>We were two to love, and two to pray,--<br>Yes, two, O God, who cried to Thee,<br>Though nothing didst Thou say.<br>Coldly Thou sat'st behind the sun!<br>And now I cry who am but one,<br>How wilt Thou speak to-day?--</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIV.<br>We were black, we were black!<br>We had no claim to love and bliss:<br>What marvel, if each turned to lack?<br>They wrung my cold hands out of his,--<br>They dragged him . . . where ? . . . I crawled to touch<br>His blood's mark in the dust! . . . not much,<br>Ye pilgrim-souls, . . . though plain as this!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XV.<br>Wrong, followed by a deeper wrong!<br>Mere grief's too good for such as I.<br>So the white men brought the shame ere long<br>To strangle the sob of my agony.<br>They would not leave me for my dull<br>Wet eyes!--it was too merciful<br>To let me weep pure tears and die.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XVI.<br>I am black, I am black!--<br>I wore a child upon my breast<br>An amulet that hung too slack,<br>And, in my unrest, could not rest:<br>Thus we went moaning, child and mother,<br>One to another, one to another,<br>Until all ended for the best:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XVII.<br>For hark ! I will tell you low . . . Iow . . .<br>I am black, you see,--<br>And the babe who lay on my bosom so,<br>Was far too white . . . too white for me;<br>As white as the ladies who scorned to pray<br>Beside me at church but yesterday;<br>Though my tears had washed a place for my knee.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XVIII.<br>My own, own child! I could not bear<br>To look in his face, it was so white.<br>I covered him up with a kerchief there;<br>I covered his face in close and tight:<br>And he moaned and struggled, as well might be,<br>For the white child wanted his liberty--<br>Ha, ha! he wanted his master right.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XIX.<br>He moaned and beat with his head and feet,<br>His little feet that never grew--<br>He struck them out, as it was meet,<br>Against my heart to break it through.<br>I might have sung and made him mild--<br>But I dared not sing to the white-faced child<br>The only song I knew.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XX.<br>I pulled the kerchief very close:<br>He could not see the sun, I swear,<br>More, then, alive, than now he does<br>From between the roots of the mango . . . where<br>. . . I know where. Close! a child and mother<br>Do wrong to look at one another,<br>When one is black and one is fair.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXI.<br>Why, in that single glance I had<br>Of my child's face, . . . I tell you all,<br>I saw a look that made me mad . . .<br>The master's look, that used to fall<br>On my soul like his lash . . . or worse!<br>And so, to save it from my curse,<br>I twisted it round in my shawl.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXII.<br>And he moaned and trembled from foot to head,<br>He shivered from head to foot;<br>Till, after a time, he lay instead<br>Too suddenly still and mute.<br>I felt, beside, a stiffening cold, . . .<br>I dared to lift up just a fold . . .<br>As in lifting a leaf of the mango-fruit.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXIII.<br>But my fruit . . . ha, ha!--there, had been<br>(I laugh to think on't at this hour! . . .)<br>Your fine white angels, who have seen<br>Nearest the secret of God's power, . . .<br>And plucked my fruit to make them wine,<br>And sucked the soul of that child of mine,<br>As the humming-bird sucks the soul of the flower.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXIV.<br>Ha, ha, for the trick of the angels white!<br>They freed the white child's spirit so.<br>I said not a word, but, day and night,<br>I carried the body to and fro;<br>And it lay on my heart like a stone . . . as chill.<br>--The sun may shine out as much as he will:<br>I am cold, though it happened a month ago.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXV.<br>From the white man's house, and the black man's hut,<br>I carried the little body on,<br>The forest's arms did round us shut,<br>And silence through the trees did run:<br>They asked no question as I went,--<br>They stood too high for astonishment,--<br>They could see God sit on His throne.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXVI.<br>My little body, kerchiefed fast,<br>I bore it on through the forest . . . on:<br>And when I felt it was tired at last,<br>I scooped a hole beneath the moon.<br>Through the forest-tops the angels far,<br>With a white sharp finger from every star,<br>Did point and mock at what was done.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXVII.<br>Yet when it was all done aright, . . . <br>Earth, 'twixt me and my baby, strewed,<br>All, changed to black earth, . . . nothing white, . . .<br>A dark child in the dark,--ensued<br>Some comfort, and my heart grew young:<br>I sate down smiling there and sung<br>The song I learnt in my maidenhood.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXVIII.<br>And thus we two were reconciled,<br>The white child and black mother, thus:<br>For, as I sang it, soft and wild<br>The same song, more melodious,<br>Rose from the grave whereon I sate!<br>It was the dead child singing that,<br>To join the souls of both of us.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXIX.<br>I look on the sea and the sky!<br>Where the pilgrims' ships first anchored lay,<br>The free sun rideth gloriously;<br>But the pilgrim-ghosts have slid away<br>Through the earliest streaks of the morn.<br>My face is black, but it glares with a scorn<br>Which they dare not meet by day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXX.<br>Ah!--in their 'stead, their hunter sons!<br>Ah, ah! they are on me--they hunt in a ring--<br>Keep off! I brave you all at once--<br>I throw off your eyes like snakes that sting!<br>You have killed the black eagle at nest, I think:<br>Did you never stand still in your triumph, and shrink<br>From the stroke of her wounded wing?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXXI.<br>(Man, drop that stone you dared to lift!--)<br>I wish you, who stand there five a-breast,<br>Each, for his own wife's joy and gift,<br>A little corpse as safely at rest<br>As mine in the mangos!--Yes, but she<br>May keep live babies on her knee,<br>And sing the song she liketh best.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXXll.<br>I am not mad: I am black.<br>I see you staring in my face--<br>I know you, staring, shrinking back--<br>Ye are born of the Washington-race:<br>And this land is the free America:<br>And this mark on my wrist . . . (I prove what I say)<br>Ropes tied me up here to the flogging-place.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXXIII.<br>You think I shrieked then? Not a sound!<br>I hung, as a gourd hangs in the sun.<br>I only cursed them all around,<br>As softly as I might have done<br>My very own child!--From these sands<br>Up to the mountains, lift your hands,<br>O slaves, and end what I begun!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXXIV.<br>Whips, curses; these must answer those!<br>For in this UNION, you have set<br>Two kinds of men in adverse rows,<br>Each loathing each: and all forget<br>The seven wounds in Christ's body fair;<br>While HE sees gaping everywhere<br>Our countless wounds that pay no debt.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXXV.<br>Our wounds are different. Your white men<br>Are, after all, not gods indeed,<br>Nor able to make Christs again<br>Do good with bleeding. We who bleed . . .<br>(Stand off!) we help not in our loss!<br>We are too heavy for our cross,<br>And fall and crush you and your seed.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">XXXVI.<br>I fall, I swoon! I look at the sky:<br>The clouds are breaking on my brain;<br>I am floated along, as if I should die<br>Of liberty's exquisite pain--<br>In the name of the white child, waiting for me<br>In the death-dark where we may kiss and agree,<br>White men, I leave you all curse-free<br>In my broken heart's disdain!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Elizabeth+Barrett+Browning">Elizabeth Barrett Browning</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=383957" data-title="The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point de Elizabeth Barrett Browning" data-description="I.
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 t..."></div>
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