Page:Darkwater (Du Bois 1920).djvu/67



Dark daughter of the lotus leaves that watch the Southern Sea!

Wan spirit of a prisoned soul a-panting to be free!

The muttered music of thy streams, the whisper of the deep,

Have kissed each other in God's name and kissed a world to sleep.

The will of the world is a whistling wind, sweeping a cloud-swept sky,

And not from the East and not from the West knelled that soul-waking cry,

But out of the South, the sad, black South—it screamed from the top of the sky,

Crying: "Awake, O ancient race!" Wailing, "O woman, arise!"

And crying and sighing and crying again as a voice in the midnight cries,—

But the burden of white men bore her back and the white world stifled her sighs.

The white world's vermin and filth:

All the dirt of London,

All the scum of New York;

Valiant spoilers of women

And conquerors of unarmed men;

Shameless breeders of bastards,

Drunk with the greed of gold,

Baiting their blood-stained hooks

With cant for the souls of the simple;

Bearing the white man's burden

Of liquor and lust and lies!

Rh