Page:The Souls of Black Folk (2nd ed).djvu/205



Dim face of Beauty haunting all the world,

Fair face of Beauty all too fair to see,

Where the lost stars adown the heavens are hurled,—

There, there alone for thee

May white peace be.

Beauty, sad face of Beauty, Mystery, Wonder,

What are these dreams to foolish babbling men

Who cry with little noises 'neath the thunder

Of Ages ground to sand,

To a little sand.

.

T was out in the country, far from home, far from my foster home, on a dark Sunday night. The road wandered from our rambling log-house up the stony bed of a creek, past wheat and corn, until we could hear dimly across the fields a rhythmic cadence of song,—soft, thrilling, powerful, that swelled and died sorrowfully in our ears. I was a country school-teacher then, fresh from the East, and had never seen a Southern Negro revival. To be sure, we in Berkshire were not perhaps as stiff and formal as they in Suffolk of olden time; yet we