The little black boy
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul
is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of
light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat
of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointed to the east, began
to say:
“Look on the rising sun: there God
does live,
And gives His light, and gives His
heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
“And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams
of love
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady
grove.
“For when our souls have learn’d
the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall
hear His voice,
Saying, ’Come out from the grove, my love
and care
And round my golden tent like lambs
rejoice’,”
Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy
I’ll shade him from the heat till he can
bear
To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee;
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver
hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.
