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.
