Page:The Souls of Black Folk (2nd ed).djvu/274

258 the way of life. "Winter 'll soon be over," was the picture of life and death to a tropical imagination. The sudden wild thunder-storms of the South awed and impressed the Negroes,—at times the rumbling seemed to them "mournful," at times imperious:

My Lord calls me,

He calls me by the thunder,

The trumpet sounds it in my soul."

The monotonous toil and exposure is painted in many words. One sees the ploughmen in the hot, moist furrow, singing:

Dere 's no rain to wet you,

Dere 's no sun to burn you,

Oh, push along, believer,

I want to go home."

The bowed and bent old man cries, with thrice-repeated wail:

and he rebukes the deyil of doubt who can whisper:

Yet the soul-hunger is there, the restlessness of the savage, the wail of the wanderer, and the plaint is put in one little phrase:

My soul wants something that's new, that's new

Over the inner thoughts of the slaves and their relations one with another the shadow of fear ever