Elizabeth Barrett Browning - The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point lyrics

I stand on the mark beside the shore
Of the first white pilgrim's bended knee
Where exile turned to ancestor
And God was thanked for liberty
I have run through the night
My skin is as dark
I bend my knee down on this mark:
I look on the sky and the sea

O pilgrim-souls, I speak to you!
I see you come proud and slow
From the land of the spirit's pale as dew
And round me and round me ye go
O pilgrims, I have gasped and run
All night long from the whips of one
Who in your names works sin and woe!

And thus I thought that I would come
And kneel here where ye knelt before
And feel your souls around me hum
In undertone to the ocean's roar


And lift my black face, my black hand
Here, in your names, to curse this land
Ye blessed in freedom's, evermore

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

And yet He has made dark things
To be glad and merry as light:
There's a little dark bird sit's 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

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

Indeed we live beneath the sky
That great smooth Hand of God stretched out
On all His children fatherly
To save them from the dread and doubt
Which would be if, from this low place
All opened straight up to His face
Into the grand eternity

And still God's sunshine and His frost
They make us hot, they make us cold
As if we were not black and lost
And the beasts and birds, in wood and fold
Do fear and take us for very men:
Could the whip-poor-will or the
Cat of the glen
Look into my eyes and be bold?

I am black, I am black!
But, once, I laughed in girlish glee
For one of my colour stood in the track
Where the drivers drove, and looked at me
And tender and full was the look he gave
Could a slave look so at another slave?
I look at the sky and the sea

And from that hour our spirit's grew
As free as if unsold, unbought:
Oh, strong enough, since we were two
To conquer the world, we thought
The drivers drove us day by day
We did not mind, we went one way
And no better a freedom sought

In the sunny ground between the canes
He said "I love you" as he passed
When the shingle-roof rang sharp
With the rains
I heard how he vowed it fast:
While others shook he smiled in the hut
As he carved me a bowl of the cocoa-nut
Through the roar of the hurricanes

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

I pulled the kerchief very close:
He could not see the sun, I swear
More, then, alive, than now he does
From between the roots of the mango where?
I know where close! A child and mother
Do wrong to look at one another
When one is black and one is fair

Why, in that single glance I had
Of my child's face, i tell you all
I saw a look that made me mad!
The master's look, that used to fall
On my soul like his lash or worse!
And so, to save it from my curse
I twisted it round in my shawl

And he moaned and trembled from foot to head
He shivered from head to foot
Till after a time, he lay instead
Too suddenly still and mute
I felt, beside, a stiffening cold:
I dared to lift up just a fold
As in lifting a leaf of the mango-fruit

But my fruit ha, ha! there, had been
(I laugh to think on 't at this hour)
Your fine white angels (who have seen
Nearest the secret of God's power)
And plucked my fruit to make them wine
And sucked the soul of that child of mine
As the humming-bird sucks the
Soul of the flower

Ha, ha, the trick of the angels white!
They freed the white child's spirit so
I said not a word, but day and night
I carried the body to and fro
And it lay on my heart like a stone, as chill
The sun may shine out as much as he will:
I am cold, though it happened a month ago

From the white man's house, and
The black man's hut
I carried the little body on
The forest's arms did round us shut
And silence through the trees did run:
They asked no question as I went
They stood too high for astonishment
They could see God sit on his throne

My little body, kerchiefed fast
I bore it on through the forest, on
And when I felt it was tired at last
I scooped a hole beneath the moon:
Through the forest-tops the angels far
With a white sharp finger from every star
Did point and mock at what was done

Yet when it was all done aught
Earth, 'twixt me and my baby, strewed
All, changed to black earth, nothing white
A dark child in the dark! ensued
Some comfort, and my heart grew young
I sate down smiling there and sung
The song I learnt in my maidenhood

And thus we two were reconciled
The white child and black mother, thus
For as I sang it soft and wild
The same song, more melodious
Rose from the grave whereon I sate
It was the dead child singing that
To join the souls of both of us

I look on the sea and the sky
Where the pilgrims' ships first anchored lay
The free sun rideth gloriously
But the pilgrim-ghosts have slid away
Through the earliest streaks of the morn:
My face is black, but it glares with a scorn
Which they dare not meet by day

Ha! in their stead, their hunter sons!
Ha, ha! they are on me they hunt in a ring!
Keep off! I brave you all at once
I throw off your eyes like snakes that sting!
You have killed the black eagle at nest
I think:
Did you ever stand still in your triumph
And shrink
From the stroke of her wounded wing?

(Man, drop that stone you dared to lift!)
I wish you who stand there five abreast
Each, for his own wife's joy and gift
A little corpse as safely at rest
As mine in the mangoes! Yes, but she
May keep live babies on her knee
And sing the song she likes the best

I am not mad: I am black
I see you staring in my face
I know you staring, shrinking back
Ye are born of the Washington race
And this land is the free America
And this mark on my wrist
(I prove what I say)
Tied me up here to the flogging-place

You think I shrieked then? Not a sound!
I hung, as a gourd hangs in the sun
I only cursed them all around
As softly as I might have done
My very own child: from these sands
Up to the mountains, lift your hands
O slaves, and end what I begun!

Whips, curses these must answer those!
For in this Union you have set
Two kinds of men in adverse rows
Each loathing each and all forget
The seven wounds in Christ's body fair
While He sees gaping everywhere
Our countless wounds that pay no debt

Our wounds are different your white men
Are, after all, not gods indeed
Nor able to make Christs again
Do good with bleeding we who bleed
(Stand off) we help not in our loss!
We are too heavy for our cross
And fall and crush you and your seed

I fall, I swoon! I look at the sky
The clouds are breaking on my brain
I am floated along, as if I should die
Of liberty's exquisite pain
In the name of the white child waiting for me
In the death dark where we
May kiss and agree
White men, I leave you all curse-free
In my broken heart's disdain!