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| MY mother bore me in the southern wild, | |
| And I am black, but O my soul is white; | |
| White as an angel is the English child, | |
| But I am black, as if bereav’d of light. | |
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| My mother taught me underneath a tree, | 5 |
| And, sitting down before the heat of day, | |
| She took me on her lap and kissèd me, | |
| And, pointing to the east, began to say: | |
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| ‘Look on the rising sun,—there God does live, | |
| And gives His light, and gives His heat away; | 10 |
| And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive | |
| Comfort in morning, joy in the noon day. | |
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| ‘And we are put on earth a little space, | |
| That we may learn to bear the beams of love; | |
| And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face | 15 |
| Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove. | |
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| ‘For when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear, | |
| The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice, | |
| Saying: “come out from the grove, My love and care, | |
| And round My golden tent like lambs rejoice.”’ | 20 |
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| Thus did my mother say, and kissèd me; | |
| And thus I say to little English boy. | |
| When I from black, and he from white cloud free, | |
| And round the tent of God like lambs we joy, | |
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| I’ll shade him from the heat, till he can bear | 25 |
| To lean in joy upon our father’s knee; | |
| And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair, | |
| And be like him, and he will then love me. | |
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