Page:The Souls of Black Folk (2nd ed).djvu/151



But the Brute said in his breast, "Till the mills I grind have ceased,

The riches shall be dust of dust, dry ashes be the feast!

"On the strong and cunning few

Cynic favors I will strew;

I will stuff their maw with overplus until their spirit dies;

From the patient and the low

I will take the joys they know;

They shall hunger after vanities and still an-hungered go.

Madness shall be on the people, ghastly jealousies arise;

Brother's blood shall cry on brother up the dead and empty skies."

.

AVE you ever seen a cotton-field white with the harvest,—its golden fleece hovering above the black earth like a silvery cloud edged with dark green, its bold white signals waving like the foam of billows from Carolina to Texas across that Black and human Sea? I have sometimes half suspected that here the winged ram Chrysomallus left that Fleece after which Jason and his Argonauts