Page:Songs of Innocence and of Experience, copy Z, 1826 (Library of Congress).pdf/9



My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white White as an angel is the English child: But I am black as if bereav'd of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree And sitting down before the heat of day She took me on her lap and kised me, And pointing 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 receiv Comfort in morning joy in the noon day.

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 sun-burnt face Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove. For