Wrong,
followed
by a deeper wrong!
Elizabeth Browning
XII.
I sang his name instead of a song,
Over and over I sang his name,
Upward and downward I drew it along
My various notes,--the same, the same!
I sang it low, that the slave-girls near
Might never guess, from aught they could hear,
It was only a name--a name.
XIII.
I 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.
XIV.
We 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 touch
His blood's mark in the dust . . . not much,
Ye pilgrim-souls, though plain as _this_!
XV.
Wrong, followed by a deeper wrong!
Mere grief's too good for such as I:
So the white men brought the shame ere long
To strangle the sob of my agony.
They would not leave me for my dull
Wet eyes! --it was too merciful
To let me weep pure tears and die.
XVI.
I 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.
XVII.
For 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 pray
Beside me at church but yesterday,
Though my tears had washed a place for my knee.
XVIII.
My own, own child! I could not bear
To 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.
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.
