John Brown’s Body quotes

A friend, an enemy, a sacred hag With two tied oceans in her medicine-bag.

They tried to fit you with an English song

And clip your speech into the English tale. But, even from the first, the words went wrong, The catbird pecked away the nightingale.

They tried to fit you with an English song And clip your speech into the English tale. But, even from the first, the words went wrong,

The catbird pecked away the nightingale.

The homesick men begot high-cheekboned things Whose wit was whittled with a different sound And Thames and all the rivers of the kings Ran into Mississippi and were drowned.

The homesick men begot high-cheekboned things Whose wit was whittled with a different sound

And Thames and all the rivers of the kings Ran into Mississippi and were drowned.

They planted England with a stubborn trust. But the cleft dust was never English dust.

So the grey lips. And so the hurt in the eyes. A hurt like a child’s, at punishment unexplained That makes the whole child-universe fall to pieces.

At the time of death, most men turn back toward the child.

Brown did not know at first that the first man dead By the sword he thought of so often as Gideon’s sword Was one of the race he had drawn that sword to free. It had been dark on the bridge.

So the grey lips. And so the hurt in the eyes.

A hurt like a child’s, at punishment unexplained That makes the whole child-universe fall to pieces.

At the time of death, most men turn back toward the child.

… sorrow or pain but only deliverance, And yet with the flame of speech, the patterns of memory, One wonders what the soul of Dangerfield Newby Said, in what terms, to the soul of Shepherd Heyward, Both born slave, both freed, both dead the same day.

What do the souls that bleed from the corpse of battle Say to the tattered night?

Perhaps it is better We have no power to visage what they might say.

How come he want to kick up such a dizziness!

Nigger-business ain’t white-folks’ business.

”

And he would sit Reading the same newspaper, after dinner, Through spectacles whose bows were getting worn While a wife knitted on an endless scarf And a child slowly formed with quiet lips “Amo, amas, amat,” and still no sound. And it would be over.

Over without having been.

His father turned a creaking page of paper And cleared his throat, “The Tribune calls,” he said, “Brown’s raid the work of a madman. Well, they’re right, But—” Mrs. Ellyat put her knitting down. “Are they going to hang him, Will?” “It looks that way.”

The law’s our yardstick, and it measures well Or well enough when there are yards to measure. Measure a wave with it, measure a fire, Cut sorrow up in inches, weigh content.

You can weigh John Brown’s body well enough, But how and in what balance weigh John Brown?

He had the shepherd’s gift, but that was all. He had no other single gift for life. Some men are pasture Death turns back to pasture, Some are fire-opals on that iron wrist, Some the deep roots of wisdoms not yet born.

It was his one sure talent. Questions creaking Uselessly back and forth. No one can say That the trial was not fair. The trial was fair, Painfully fair by every rule of law, And that it was made not the slightest difference.

The law’s our yardstick, and it measures well Or well enough when there are yards to measure.

Measure a wave with it, measure a fire, Cut sorrow up in inches, weigh content. You can weigh John Brown’s body well enough, But how and in what balance weigh John Brown?

He had no other single gift for life. Some men are pasture Death turns back to pasture, Some are fire-opals on that iron wrist, Some the deep roots of wisdoms not yet born. John Brown was none of these,

He was a stone, A stone eroded to a cutting edge By obstinacy, failure and cold prayers.

Discredited farmer, dubiously involved In lawsuit after lawsuit, Shubel Morgan Fantastic bandit of the Kansas border, Red-handed murderer at Pottawattomie, Cloudy apostle, whooped along to death By those who do no violence themselves But only buy the guns to have it done, Sincere of course, …

John Brown Was such a stone—unreasoning as the stone, Destructive as the stone, and, if you like, Heroic and devoted as such a stone.

He had no gift for life, no gift to bring Life but his body and a cutting edge, But he knew how to die.

And yardstick law Gave him six weeks to burn that hoarded knowledge In one swift fire whose sparks fell like live coals On every State in the Union.

Howe most anxiously Denied all godly connection with the raid, And Gerrit Smith conveniently went mad For long enough to sponge his mind of all Memory of such an unsuccessful deed. Only the tough, swart-minded Higginson Kept a grim decency, would not deny.

Pity the portly men, pity the pious, Pity the fool who lights the powder-mine,

They need your counterfeit penny, they will live long.

The two white horses dragged the rattling cart Out of the town. Brown sat upon his coffin. Beyond the soldiers lay the open fields Earth-colored, sleepy with unfallen frost. The farmer’s eye took in the bountiful land.

“This is a beautiful country,” said John Brown.

The gallows-stairs were climbed, the death-cap fitted. Behind the gallows, Before a line of red-and-grey cadets, A certain odd Professor T. J. Jackson Watched disapprovingly the ragged militia Deploy for twelve long minutes ere they reached Their destined places.

John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave. Already the corpse is changed, under the stone, The strong flesh rotten, the bones dropping away. Cotton will grow next year, in spite of the skull. Slaves will be slaves next year, in spite of the bones.

Nothing is changed, John Brown, nothing is changed.

“There is a song in my bones. There is a song In my white bones.”

All week the office-seekers Had plagued him as the flies in fly-time plague A gaunt-headed, patient horse. The children weren’t well And Mollie was worried about them so sharp with her tongue. But he knew Mollie and tried to let it go by.

Men tracked dirt in the house and women liked carpets. Each had a piece of the right, that was all most people could stand.

Look at his Cabinet here. There were Seward and Chase, Both of them good men, couldn’t afford to lose them, But Chase hates Seward like poison and Seward hates Chase And both of ’em think they ought to be President Instead of me.

I suppose a man who was touchy about his pride Would send them both to the dickens when he found out, But I can’t do that as long as they do their work.

The Union’s too big a horse to keep changing the saddle Each time it pinches you.

As long as you’re sure The saddle fits, you’re bound to put up with the pinches And not keep fussing the horse.

Fighting Joe Hooker once Said with that tart, unbridled tongue of his That made so many needless enemies, “Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?” The phrase Stings with a needle sharpness, just or not, But even he was never heard to say,

“Who ever saw a dead congressman?”

And yet, he was a man with a sharp tongue.

Yesterday some men had gone by And stopped for a drink of water. She’d heard they were soldiers. She couldn’t be sure. It had seemed to worry the folks But it took more than soldiers and such to worry her now.

Young people always worried a lot too much.

No soldiers that had any sense would fight around here. She’d had a good night. Today would be a good day.

If you take a flat map And move wooden blocks upon it strategically, The thing looks well, the blocks behave as they should.

The science of war is moving live men like blocks.

And getting the blocks into place at a fixed moment. But it takes time to mold your men into blocks And flat maps turn into country where creeks and gullies Hamper your wooden squares.

They’d ordered Jackson up to the threatened left But Beauregard was sure that the main assault Would come on the right. He’d planned it so—a good plan—

But once the blocks start moving, they keep on moving.

The hands of the scuffed brown clock in the kitchen of the Henry House point to nine-forty-five. Judith Henry does not hear the clock, she hears in the sky a vast dim roar like piles of heavy lumber crashingly falling.

Only Lincoln, awkwardly enduring, confused by a thousand counsels, is neither overwhelmed nor touched to folly by the madness that runs along the streets like a dog in August scared of itself, scaring everyone who crosses its path.

Defeat is a fact and victory can be a fact.

If the idea is good, it will survive defeat, it may even survive the victory. His huge, patient, laborious hands start kneading the stuff of the Union together again; he gathers up the scraps and puts them together;

This is Ellyat’s tune, this is no tune but his. Nine months have passed since McDowell reddened Bull Run, Nine strong-hoofed months, but they have meant little to Ellyat.

What means the noise of the wind to the dust in the wind?

But the wind calls strange things out, calls strange men out, A dozen pictures flash in front of the eyes And are gone in a flash— rough-bearded Tecumseh Sherman, Who had tried most things, but being cursed with a taste For honesty, had found small …

One cannot help feeling sorry for George McClellan, He should have been a hero by every rule. He looked the part—he could have acted the part Word perfectly. He looked like an empire-maker. But so few empire-makers have looked the part.

Fate has a way of picking unlikely material,

Greasy-haired second lieutenants of French artillery, And bald-headed, dubious, Roman rake-politicians.

and “Halt!” and—sudden explosion Of desultory popcorn in iron poppers— Wild running at random—a crash among broken boughs— A fighting sound—Bailey’s voice, half-strangled but clear, “Run like hell, Jack, they’ll never catch you!” He ran like hell.

Time passed like the rain. Time passed and was one with the rain.

Ellyat woke from a nightmare and put out his hand To touch the wall by his bed, but there was no wall. Then he listened for Bailey’s snoring.

Cold comes back and pain comes back And the lizard, too. And the burden in the sack May be meant for you.

Do not play the risen dunce With unrisen men.

Lazarus was risen once But earth gaped again.

She raised Marse Billy when he was puny, She cared for the Squire when he got loony, Fed him and washed him and combed his head, Nobody else would do instead. The matriarch of the weak and the young,

The lazy crooning, comforting tongue.

She has had children of her own, But the white-skinned ones are bone of her bone. They may not be hers, but she is theirs, And if the shares were unequal shares, She does not know it, now she is old.

… helped Mary Lou to stand up straight, For she was gentle, but she could hate And she hated the North with the hate of Jael When the dry hot hands went seeking the nail, The terrible hate of women’s ire, The smoky, the long-consuming fire.

The Yankees were devils, and she could pray,

For devils, no doubt, upon Judgment Day, But now in the world, she would hate them still And send the gentlemen out to kill.

After a while you still want to talk of the dead. But we are too tired. We will send you the pistol still, The photograph-case, the knickknacks, if we can find them, But the war has gone on too long.

We cannot talk to you still, as we used to, about the dead.)

Nancy Huguenot’s here tonight. Have you danced with her yet? She didn’t want to come. She was brave to come. (Phil Ferrier was Nancy’s lover. She sent him off. She cut her hair for a keepsake.

… column passed by And the women waved, and it came back and they waved, And, in between, if you loved, you lived by a dull Clock of long minutes that passed like sunbonneted women Each with the same dry face and the same set hands.

I have read, they have told me that love is a pretty god

With light wings stuck to his shoulders. They did not tell me That love is nursing a hawk with yellow eyes, That love is feeding your heart to the beak of the hawk Because an old woman, gossiping, uttered a name.

I have read, they have told me that love is a pretty god With light wings stuck to his shoulders. They did not tell me

That love is nursing a hawk with yellow eyes,

That love is feeding your heart to the beak of the hawk Because an old woman, gossiping, uttered a name.

Napoleon was wiser But he could not silence one ugly, clever De Staël.

Make war on the men⁠—the ladies have too-long memories.

The head of the snake is captured—the tail gripped fast— But the body in between still writhes and resists, Vicksburg is still unfallen—Grant not yet master— Sheridan, Sherman, Thomas still in the shadow.

But why is the game so ordered, what crowns the kings? They are cities of streets and houses like other cities. Baltimore might be taken, and war go on, Atlanta will be taken and war go on, Why should these two near cities be otherwise?

We do not fight for the real but for shadows we make.

A flag is a piece of cloth and a word is a sound, But we make them something neither cloth nor a sound, Totems of love and hate, black sorcery-stones, So with these cities.

Baltimore might be taken, and war go on, Atlanta will be taken and war go on, Why should these two near cities be otherwise? We do not fight for the real but for shadows we make.

A flag is a piece of cloth and a word is a sound,

But we make them something neither cloth nor a sound, Totems of love and hate, black sorcery-stones, So with these cities.

But, if you would sing of fighters, sing of these men, Sing of Fair Oaks and the battered Seven Days, Not of the raging of Ajax, the cry of Hector,

These men were not gods nor shielded by any gods,

They were men of our shape: they fought as such men may fight With a mortal skill: when they died it was as men die.

But, if you would sing of fighters, sing of these men, Sing of Fair Oaks and the battered Seven Days, Not of the raging of Ajax, the cry of Hector, These men were not gods nor shielded by any gods,

They were men of our shape: they fought as such men may fight

With a mortal skill: when they died it was as men die.

We are ready to fight. We know we can fight and win. But why will they waste us in fights that cannot be won? When will we get a man that can really lead us?” These are the articulate that write the letters.

The inarticulate merely undergo.

There are times of good food and times of campfire jokes, Times of good weather, times of partial success In those two years. “The mail came. Thanks for the papers. We had a good feed at Mrs. Wilson’s place. I feel fine today.

All things except the heart.

The heart he kept himself, that answers all.

For here was someone who lived all his life In the most fierce and open light of the sun, Wrote letters freely, did not guard his speech, Listened and talked with every sort of man, And kept his heart a secret to the end From …

… dummy in his uniform And put our words into the dummy’s mouth, Say “Here Lee must have thought,” and “There, no doubt, By what we know of him, we may suppose He felt—this pang or that—” but he remains Beyond our stagecraft, reticent as ice,

Reticent as the fire within the stone.

Yet—look at the face again—look at it well— This man was not repose, this man was act.

His heart was not a stone but trumpet-shaped And a long challenge blew an anger through it That was more dread for being musical First, last, and to the end. Again he said A curious thing to life.

“I’m always wanting something.”

The brief phrase Slides past us, hardly grasped in the smooth flow Of the well-balanced, mildly-humorous prose That goes along to talk of cats and duties, Maxims of conduct, farming and poor bachelors, But for a second there, the marble cracked And a strange man …

It was not anything he left undone. —What does Proportion want that it can lack? —What does the ultimate hunger of the flesh Want from the sky more than a sky of air?

He wanted something. That must be enough.

Now he rides Traveller back into the mist.

But when you were weak and lived in a place like this, Things changed. There was nothing strong about death any more,

He was only the gnawed rat-bone on the dirty floor,

That you stumbled across and hardly bothered to curse. That was all. The two Michigan men had died last night.

God’s will is General This and Senator That, God’s will is those poor colored fellows’ will, It is the will of the Chicago churches, It is this man’s and his worst enemy’s. But all of them are sure they know God’s will.

I am the only man who does not know it.

And, yet, if it is probable that God Should, and so very clearly, state His will To others, on a point of my own duty, It might be thought He would reveal it me Directly, more especially as I So earnestly desire to know His …

… speed— A young dog can outrun him any time, Outlook him and outeat him and outleap him, But, Mister, that dog’s hell on a cold scent And, once he gets his teeth in what he’s after, He don’t let go until he knows he’s dead.”

I am that old, deaf hunting-dog, O Lord,

And the world’s kennel holds ten thousand hounds Smarter and faster and with finer coats To hunt your hidden purpose up the wind And bell upon the trace you leave behind.

I can’t complain. I’m ready to admit You could have made a better-looking dog From the same raw material, no doubt,

But, since You didn’t, this’ll have to do.

Therefore I utterly lift up my hands To You, and here and now beseech Your aid.

At best we never seem To know You wholly, but there’s something left, A strange, last courage. We can fail and fail, But, deep against the failure, something wars, Something goes forward, something lights a match,

Something gets up from Sangamon County ground

Armed with a bitten and a blunted axe And after twenty thousand wasted strokes Brings the tall hemlock crashing to the ground.

At best we never seem To know You wholly, but there’s something left, A strange, last courage. We can fail and fail, But, deep against the failure, something wars, Something goes forward, something lights a match, Something gets up from Sangamon County ground

Armed with a bitten and a blunted axe

And after twenty thousand wasted strokes Brings the tall hemlock crashing to the ground.

We can fail and fail, But, deep against the failure, something wars, Something goes forward, something lights a match, Something gets up from Sangamon County ground Armed with a bitten and a blunted axe

And after twenty thousand wasted strokes

Brings the tall hemlock crashing to the ground.

We can fail and fail, But, deep against the failure, something wars, Something goes forward, something lights a match, Something gets up from Sangamon County ground Armed with a bitten and a blunted axe And after twenty thousand wasted strokes

Brings the tall hemlock crashing to the ground.

Spade saw the yellow river rolling ahead His sore, cracked lips curled back in a death’s head grin And his empty belly ceased to stick to his sides. He sat on the bank a minute to rest his legs And catch his breath.

And then you wake in the morning And the air’s got soft and you plant the narrow-edged seeds, They grow all Summer and now we’ve put them in barns To sleep again for a while.

I am the seed and the husk. I have sown and reaped.

My heart is a barn full of grain that my work has harvested. My body holds the ripe grain. I can wait my time.”

Pity the gardeners, Pity Boston, pity the pure in heart,

Pity the men whom Time goes past in the night,

Without their knowledge. They worked through the heat of the day.

Crush out the fly with your thumb and wipe your hand, You cannot crush the leaden, creaking machine, The first endorsement, the paper on the desk Referred by Adjutant Feeble to Captain Dull For further information and his report.

Some men wish evil and accomplish it

But most men, when they work in that machine, Just let it happen somewhere in the wheels. The fault is no decisive, villainous knife But the dull saw that is the routine mind.

Some men wish evil and accomplish it But most men, when they work in that machine, Just let it happen somewhere in the wheels.

The fault is no decisive, villainous knife

But the dull saw that is the routine mind.

Some men wish evil and accomplish it But most men, when they work in that machine, Just let it happen somewhere in the wheels. The fault is no decisive, villainous knife

But the dull saw that is the routine mind.

Why, if a man lay dying on their desk They’d do their best to help him, friend or foe, But this is merely a respectfully Submitted paper, properly endorsed To be sent on and on, and gather blood.

Some men wish evil and accomplish it

But most men, when they work in that machine,

Just let it happen somewhere in the wheels. The fault is no decisive, villainous knife But the dull saw that is the routine mind.

Some men wish evil and accomplish it But most men, when they work in that machine,

Just let it happen somewhere in the wheels.

The fault is no decisive, villainous knife But the dull saw that is the routine mind.

The little pictures wreathe into smoke again. The mummy-cases close upon the dark legion. The papers are filed away. If they once were sent To another court for some last word of review, They are back again.

It seems strange that such tidy files

Of correspondence respectfully submitted Should be returned from God with no final endorsement.

The little pictures wreathe into smoke again. The mummy-cases close upon the dark legion. The papers are filed away. If they once were sent To another court for some last word of review, They are back again. It seems strange that such tidy files

Of correspondence respectfully submitted

Should be returned from God with no final endorsement.

The mummy-cases close upon the dark legion. The papers are filed away. If they once were sent To another court for some last word of review, They are back again. It seems strange that such tidy files Of correspondence respectfully submitted

Should be returned from God with no final endorsement.

The slow carts hitched along toward the place of exchange Through a bleak wind. It was not a long wagon train, Wagons and horses were too important to waste On prisoners for exchange, if the men could march.

The hand stopped rubbing. The spoons were shined. He put them back in the flannel bag And stared at his scrap of chamois-rag.

War was a throat that swallowed things

And you couldn’t cure it with conjurings.

The hand stopped rubbing. The spoons were shined. He put them back in the flannel bag And stared at his scrap of chamois-rag. War was a throat that swallowed things

And you couldn’t cure it with conjurings.

Sally Dupré watched over her dyeing-pots, Evening was setting in with a light slow rain That marched like a fairy army—there being nothing From the white fog on the hill to the soaked door-stone But a moving grey and silver hurry of lances, Distinct yet …

It will keep him warm.

And women in love do better without a heart.

What fools we are to wait the wheel of the year, The year will not help our trouble. What fools we are To give our parti-colored hearts to the rain.

War, to her, is a good day when papers sell Or a bad day when papers don’t. War is fat black type.

Anything’s realer than war.

By Omaha The valleys and gorges are white with the covered wagons Moving out toward the West and the new, free land. All through the war they go on.

Turn your eyes away From these chiefs and captains, put them back in their books. Let the armies sleep like bears in a hollow cave.

War is an iron screen in front of a time,

With pictures smoked upon it in red and black, Some gallant enough, some deadly, but all intense. We look at the pictures, thinking we know the time, We only know the screen. Look behind it now At the great parti-colored quilt of these patchwork States.

He lay silent, seeing it so, while the watchers listened. He had been dying once, but that was a dream. The ground was plain enough now. He roused himself and spoke in a different voice.

“Let us cross the river,” he said, “and rest under the shade of the trees.”

It was a chance. This is a chance. He weighs the chance in his hand Like a stone, reflecting. Four years from Harper’s Ferry Two years since the First Manassas—and this last year Stroke after stroke successful—but still no end.

He is a man with a knotty club in his hand

Beating off bulls from the breaks in a pasture fence And he has beaten them back at each fresh assault, McClellan—Burnside—Hooker at Chancellorsville— Pope at the Second Manassas—Banks in the Valley— But the pasture is trampled; his army needs new pasture.

He turned his head through stiff ages. Two feet away A man was lying quietly, fast asleep, A bearded man in an enemy uniform. He had a canteen. Ellyat wet his lips with his tongue. “Hey Johnnie, got some water?” he whispered weakly.

Then he saw that the Johnnie had only half a head, And frowned because such men could not lend canteens.

He was half-delirious now, and it seemed to him As if he had two bodies, one that was pain And one that lay beyond pain, on a couch of dew, And stared at the other with sober wondering eyes.

These were Hancock’s men, the men of the Second Corps, Eleven States were mixed there, where Minnesota stood In battle-order with Maine, and Rhode Island beside New York, The metals of all the North, cooled into an axe of war.

The strong sticks of the North, bound into a fasces-shape, The hard winters of snow, the wind with the cutting edge,

And against them came that summer that does not die with the year, Magnolia and honeysuckle and the blue Virginia flag.

… that it seemed more like a sea than a wave, A sea continually torn by stones flung out of the sky, And yet, as it came, still closing, closing and rolling on, As the moving sea closes over the flaws and rips of the tide.

You could mark the path that they took by the dead that they left behind, Spilled from that deadly march as a cart spills meal on a road,

And yet they came on unceasing, the fifteen thousand no more, And the blue Virginia flag did not fall, did not fall, did not fall.

You could mark the path that they took by the dead that they left behind, Spilled from that deadly march as a cart spills meal on a road, And yet they came on unceasing, the fifteen thousand no more,

And the blue Virginia flag did not fall, did not fall, did not fall.

They halted but once to fire as they came.

… a mile away, in the shade of a little wood, Stared, with his mouth shut down, and saw them go and be slain, And then saw for a single moment, the blue Virginia flag Planted beyond the wall, by that other flag that he knew.

The two flags planted together, one instant, like hostile flowers.

Then the smoke wrapped both in a mantle—and when it had blown away, Armistead lay in his blood, and the rest were dead or down, And the valley grey with the fallen and the wreck of the broken wave.

So you splash and slip through the water and come at last Safe, to the Southern side, while Meade does not strike; Safe to take other roads, safe to march upon roads you know For two long years. And yet—each road that you take,

Each dusty road leads to Appomattox now.

It is over now, but they will not let it be over.

It was over with John Brown when the sun rose up To show him the town in arms and he did not flee, Yet men were killed after that, before it was over, And he did not die until November was cool —Yellow leaves falling …

Where the houses stood, Strong houses, built for weather, lasting it out, The chimneys stand alone. The chimneys are blackened. (Sheridan has been there.) This Valley has been The granary of Lee’s army for years and years. Sheridan makes his report on his finished work.

“If a crow intends to fly over the Valley now He’ll have to carry his own provisions,” says Sheridan.

The lonely man with the chin like John Calhoun’s Knows it is over, will not know it is over. Many hands are turning against him in these last years. He makes mistakes. He is stubborn and sick at heart.

The cloud lifts, after all. They bring him the news. He is sure of being President four years more. He thinks about it.

He says, “Well, I guess they thought They’d better not swap horses, crossing a stream.”

The deserters begin to leave the Confederate armies. …

I wish I remembered When I had to quit marchin’ last night. Well, if I start now, I reckon I’m bound to catch ’em.” But when he rose He looked at the road and saw where the march had passed —

Feet going on through the dust and the sallow mud, Feet going on forever⁠—

He saw that track. He was suddenly very tired. He had been tired after fighting often enough But this was another weariness.

It doesn’t seem as if a cause could lose When it’s believed in by a man like that. And yet we’re losing. And he knows it all. No, he won’t ever say it. But he knows.

I’d feel more comfortable if he’d move.

We had a chance at Spottsylvania, We had some chances in the Wilderness. We always hurt them more than we were hurt And yet we’re here—and they keep coming on.

What is it for? What does he think? His hands are lying there Quiet as stones or shadows in his lap. His beard is whiter than the dogwood bloom, But there is nothing ruined in his face, And nothing beaten in those steady eyes.

If he’s grown old, it isn’t like a man, It’s more the way a river might grow old.

My mother knew him at old dances once. She said he liked to joke and he was dark then, Dark and as straight as he can stand today. If he would only move, I could go forward.

So life works in us for a little while And then the ferment’s quiet. So we do Wrongs much beyond intent, and suffer them.

So we go looking for the wilderness-stone.

I shall smell lilac in Connecticut No doubt, before I die, and see the clean White, reticent, small churches of my youth, The gardens full of phlox and mignonette, The pasture-bars I broke to run away.

Sherman’s buzzin’ along to de sea, Jubili, Jubilo!

Sherman’s buzzin’ along to de sea, Like Moses ridin’ on a bumblebee,

Settin’ de prisoned and de humble free! Hit’s de year of Jubilo!

… thanks but hate from the thing he saved, And everywhere, A black earth stirs, a wind blows over black earth, A wind blows into black faces, into old hands Knotted with long rheumatics, cramped on the hoe, Into old backs bent double over the cotton,

The wind of freedom, the wind of the jubilo.

They stray from the lost plantations like children strayed, Grinning and singing, following the blue soldiers, They steal from the lonesome cabins like runaways Laden with sticks and bundles and conjur-charms;

… golden voice Crying dark heaven through the spirituals, Soft mellow of the levee roustabouts, Singing at night against the banjo-moon— That you will be a match for any song Sung by old, populous nations in the past, And stand like hills against the American sky,

And lay your black spear down by Roland’s horn.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, the scythe of the march mows on, The Southern papers discount it as best they can. Lincoln is anxious, Davis more anxious still. The war is in its last winter of strife and pain.

…

Oh, blackskinned epic, epic with the black spear, I cannot sing you, having too white a heart,

And yet, some day, a poet will rise to sing you And sing you with such truth and mellowness, —Deep mellow of the husky, golden voice Crying dark heaven through the spirituals, Soft mellow of the levee roustabouts, Singing at night against the banjo-moon— That …

Though the only horse you could call real black Is the horsefly sittin’ on Shepley’s back, But, women and children, do not fear, They’ll feed the lions and us, next year. And, women and children, dry your eyes,

The Southern gentleman never dies.

He just lives on by his strength of will Like a damn ole rooster too tough to kill Or a brand-new government dollar-bill That you can use for a trousers-patch Or lightin’ a fire, if you’ve got a match, Or makin’ a bunny a paper …

I know he rode by the riverside, Calling Blue Ruin or Georgia Lad With the huntsman’s crotchet that sets them mad. His face was ruddy—his face is white— I wonder if Father died last night? That cloud in the sky is a thunderhead.

The world I knew is a long time dead.

Shepley looks like a knife on guard, Reckon he’s taking it mighty hard, Reckon he loved her and no mistake, Glad it isn’t my wedding cake, Wainscott oughtn’t to plague him so, Means all right but he doesn’t know.