Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/229

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The vision of a scion of a despised and rejected race, the span of whose life is measured by the years of its Golden Jubilee, and whose fancy, like the vine that girdles the tree-trunk, runneth both forward and back. I see the African savage as he drinks his palmy wine, and basks in the sunshine of his native bliss, and is happy. I see the man-catcher, impelled by thirst of gold, as he entraps his simple-souled victim in the snares of bondage and death, by use of force or guile. I see the ocean basin whitened with his bones, and the ocean current running red with his blood, amidst the hellish horrors of the middle passage. I see him laboring for two centuries and a half in unrequited toil, making the hillsides of our southland to glow with the snow-white fleece of cotton, and the valleys to glisten with the golden sheaves of grain. I see him silently enduring cruelty and torture indescribable, with flesh flinching beneath the sizz of angry whip or quivering under the gnaw of the sharp-toothed bloodhound. I see a chivalric civilization instinct with dignity, comity and grace rising upon pillars supported by his strength and brawny arm. I see the swarthy matron lavishing her soul in altruistic devotion upon the offspring of her alabaster mistress. I see the haughty sons of a haughty race pouring out their lustful passion upon black womanhood, filling our land with a bronzed and tawny brood.