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(From Africa)
A SLAVE, and old, within her veins | |
| There runs that warm, forbidden blood | |
| That no man dares to dignify | |
| In elevated song. The chains | |
| That held her race but yesterday | 5 |
| Hold still the hands of men. Forbid | |
| Is Ethiop. The turbid flood | |
| Of prejudice lies stagnant still, | |
| And all the world is tainted. Will | |
| And wit lie broken as a lance | 10 |
| Against the brazen mailéd face | |
Of old opinion.
None advance | |
| Steel-clad and glad to the attack, | |
| With trumpet and with song. Look back! | |
| Beneath yon pyramids lie hid | 15 |
| The histories of her great race. | |
| Old Nilus rolls right sullen by, | |
With all his secrets.
Who shall say: | |
| My father reared a pyramid; | |
| My brother clipped the dragon’s wings; | 20 |
| My mother was Semiramis? | |
| Yea, harps strike idly out of place; | |
| Men sing of savage Saxon kings | |
| New-born and known but yesterday. | |
| Nay, ye who boast ancestral name | 25 |
| And vaunt deeds dignified by time | |
| Must not despise her. Who hath worn, | |
| Since time began, a face that is | |
| So all-enduring, old like this,— | |
A face like Africa’s?
Behold! | 30 |
| The Sphinx is Africa. The bond | |
| Of silence is upon her. Old | |
| And white with tombs, and rent and shorn | |
| And trampled on, yet all untamed; | |
| All naked now, yet not ashamed,— | 35 |
| The mistress of the young world’s prime | |
| Sleeps satisfied upon her fame. | |
| Beyond the Sphinx, and still beyond, | |
| Beyond the tawny desert-tomb | |
| Of Time, beyond tradition, loom | 40 |
| And lift ghostlike from out the gloom | |
| Her thousand cities, battle-torn | |
| And gray with story and with time. | |
| |
| She points a hand and cries: “Go read | |
| The granite obelisks that lord | 45 |
| Old Rome, and know my name and deed. | |
| My archives these, and plundered when | |
| I had grown weary of all men.” | |
| We turn to these; we cry: “Abhorred | |
| Old Sphinx, behold! we cannot read!” | 50 |
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