Page:The Souls of Black Folk (2nd ed).djvu/266



I walk through the churchyard

To lay this body down;

I know moon-rise, I know star-rise;

I walk in the moonlight, I walk in the starlight;

I'll lie in the grave and stretch out my arms,

I'll go to judgment in the evening of the day,

And my soul and thy soul shall meet that day,

When I lay this body down.

.

HEY that walked in darkness sang songs in the olden days—Sorrow Songs—for they were weary at heart. And so before each thought that I have written in this book I have set a phrase, a haunting echo of these weird old songs in which the soul of the black slave spoke to men. Ever since I was a child these songs have stirred me strangely. They came out of the South unknown to me, one by one, and yet at once I knew them as of me and of mine. Then in after years when I came to Nashville I saw the great temple builded of these