Ancestral Spirit, hidden from my sight
By modern Time’s unnumbered works and ways
On which in awe and wonderment I gaze,
Where hid’st thou in the deepness of the night?
What evil powers thy healing presence blight?
Thou who from out the dark and dust didst raise
The Ethiop standard in the curtained days,
Before the white God said: Let there be light!
Bring ancient music to my modern heart,
Let fall the light upon my sable face
That once gleamed upon the Ethiopian’s art;
Lift me to thee out of this alien place
So I may be, thine exiled counterpart,
The worthy singer of my world and race.
Think you I am not fiend and savage too?
Think you I could not arm me with a gun
And shoot down ten of you for every one
Of my black brothers murdered, burnt by you?
Be not deceived, for every deed you do
I could match—out-match: am I not Afric’s son,
Black of that black land where black deeds are done?
But the Almighty from the darkness drew
My soul and said: Even thou shalt be a light
Awhile to burn on the benighted earth,
Thy dusky face I set among the white
For thee to prove thyself of higher worth;
Before the world is swallowed up in night,
To show thy little lamp: go forth, go forth!
God gave you power to build and help and lift;
But you proved prone to persecute and slay
And from the high and noble course to drift
Into the darkness from the light of day.
He gave you law and order, strength of will
The lesser peoples of the world to lead;
You chose to break and crush them through life’s mill,
But for your earthly gains to make them bleed:
Because you’ve proved unworthy of your trust,
God—He shall humble you down to the dust.
You have betrayed the black, maligned the yellow;
But what else could we hope of you who set
The hand even of your own against his fellow;
To stem the dire tide that threatens yet?
You called upon the name of your false god
To lash our wounded flesh with knotted cords
And trample us into the blood-stained sod,
And justified your deeds with specious words:
Oh! you have proved unworthy of your trust,
And God shall humble you down to the dust.
The pain you gave us nothing can assuage,
Who hybridized a proud and virile race,
Bequeathed to it a bastard heritage
And made the black ashamed to see his face.
You ruined him, put doubt into his heart,
You set a sword between him and his kin,
And preached to him, with simple, lying art
About the higher worth of your white skin!
Oh White Man! You have trifled with your trust,
And God shall humble you down to the dust.
You blinded go, afraid to see the Truth,
Closing your eyes to and denying Beauty;
You stultify the dreams of visioned youth
All in the prostituted name of Duty.
You place your Seers with madmen, fools and rogues,
Their words distort and twist, despise their creed:
You choose instead the little demagogues
That will uphold you in your shameless greed:
Because you’ve proved unworthy of your trust,
Oh, He shall humble you!—down to the dust.
An ugly figure, heavy, overfed,
—Settles uneasily into a chair;
Nervously he mops his pimply pink bald head,
Frowns at the fawning waiter standing near.
The entire service tries its best to please
This overpampered piece of broken-health,
Who sits there thoughtless, querulous, obese,
Wrapped in his sordid visions of vast wealth.
Great God! if creatures like this money-fool,
Who hold the service of mankind so cheap,
Over the people must forever rule,
Driving them at their will like helpless sheep—
Then let proud mothers cease from giving birth;
Let human beings perish from the earth.
Lit with cheap colored lights a basement den,
With rows of chairs and tables on each side,
And, all about, young, dark-skinned women and men
Drinking and smoking, merry, vacant-eyed.
A Negro band, that scarcely seems awake,
Drones out half-heartedly a lazy tune,
While quick and willing boys their order take
And hurry to and from the near saloon.
Then suddenly a happy, lilting note
Is struck, the walk and hop and trot begin,
Under the smoke upon foul air afloat;
Around the room the laughing puppets spin
To sound of fiddle, drum and clarinet,
Dancing, their world of shadows to forget.
’Tis best to sit and gaze; my heart then dances
To the lithe bodies gliding slowly by,
The amorous and inimitable glances
That subtly pass from roguish eye to eye,
The laughter gay like sounding silver ringing,
That fills the whole wide room from floor to ceiling,—
A rush of rapture to my tried soul bringing—
The deathless spirit of a race revealing.
Not one false step, no note that rings not true!
Unconscious even of the higher worth
Of their great art, they serpent-wise glide through
The syncopated waltz. Dead to the earth
And her unkindly ways of toil and strife,
For them the dance is the true joy of life.
And yet they are the outcasts of the earth,
A race oppressed and scorned by ruling man;
How can they thus consent to joy and mirth
Who live beneath a world-eternal ban?
No faith is theirs, no shining ray of hope,
Except the martyr’s faith, the hope that death
Some day will free them from their narrow scope
And once more merge them with the infinite breath.
But, oh! they dance with poetry in their eyes
Whose dreamy loveliness no sorrow dims,
And parted lips and eager, gleeful cries,
And perfect rhythm in their nimble limbs.
The gifts divine are theirs, music and laughter;
All other things, however great, come after.
The little peoples of the troubled earth,
The little nations that are weak and white;—
For them the glory of another birth.
For them the lifting of the veil of night.
The big men of the world in concert met,
Have sent forth in their power a new decree:
Upon the old harsh wrongs the sun must set,
Henceforth the little peoples must be free!
But we, the blacks, less than the trampled dust,
Who walk the new ways with the old dim eyes,—
We to the ancient gods of greed and lust
Must still be offered up as sacrifice:
Oh, we who deign to live but will not dare,
The white world’s burden must forever bear!
Long struggling under the Imperial heel,
Some dared not see the white flame of your star
Dimmed by the loathsome shadow of your Tsar.
But men who clung to sacred dreams could feel
Some day you would put forth your arm of steel
And drag the mannikins from near and far,
Before the mighty people’s judgment bar,
To answer for the ruined commonweal...
Down from their high, dishonoured place you hurled
The cowed, incompetent, corrupted few;
The blood-bathed flag of a new life unfurled,
Revealed your soul alike to Slav and Jew:
The eyes of the too-long submissive world,
Lifted in golden hope, are turned to you!
We are tired, tired, tired—we are work-weary and war-weary;
What though the skies are soft-blue and the birds still sing
And the balmy air of day is like wine? Life is dreary
And the whole wide world is sick and suffering.
We are weary, weary, weary, sad and tired and no longer
Will we go on as before, glad to be the willing tools
Of the hard and heartless few, the favoured and the stronger,
Who have strength to crush and kill, for we are fools.
We will calmly fold our arms sore from labouring, and aching,
We will not still feed and guard the hungry, hideous, huge machine
That yawns with ugly mouth, performs its grim task of life-breaking
Like a fat whore, coarse and brazen and obscene.
O, to pull the thing to pieces! O, to wreck it all and smash
With the power and the will that only holy hate can give;
Even though our broken bodies may be caught in the crash—
Even so—that children yet unborn may live!
Last night I dreamed that in the deadly strife,
Where privileged power rules with ruthless might,
I saw my body, a corpse still breathing life,
Trampled and mangled, a bloody, blackened sight.
If such should be my fate, I pray it will
Come to me sudden-swift, a keen sword-dart,
Sent deeply through my burning breast to still
The rhythmic beat of my rebellious heart.
So, I should have the grand end come to me,
While following the only way of duty
And questing for the soul of truth and beauty!
I’d go convinced that there could never be
A fairer life for truth or beauty’s flower,
While earth is ruled by man’s imperial power.
They’ve taken thee out of the simple soil,
Where the warm sun made mellowy thy tones,
And voices plaintive from eternal toil,
Thy music spoke in liquid lyric moans;
They’ve stolen thee out of the brooding wood,
Where scenting bloodhounds caught thy whispered note,
And birds and flowers only understood
The sorrow sobbing from a choking throat;
And set thee in this garish marble hall
Of faces hard with conscience-worried pride,
Like convicts witnessing a carnival,
For whom an alien vandal mind has tried
To fashion thee for virtuoso wonders,
Drowning thy beauty in orchestral thunders.
Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.
The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
A chafing savage, down the decent street;
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.
Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour,
Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,
And find in it the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!
Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate
Against the potent poison of your hate.