elody and mighty
cadences of Negro song fluttered and thundered.

I have called my tiny community a world, and so its isolation made it;
and yet there was among us but a half-awakened common consciousness,
sprung from common joy and grief, at burial, birth, or wedding; from a
common hardship in poverty, poor land, and low wages; and above all,
from the sight of the Veil that hung between us and Opportunity. All
this caused us to think some thoughts together; but these, when ripe for
speech, were spoken in various languages. Those whose eyes twenty-five
or more years before had seen "the glory of the coming of the Lord," saw
in every present hindrance or help a dark fatalism bound to bring all
things right in His own good time. The mass of those to whom slavery was
a dim recollection of childhood found the world a puzzling thing: it
asked little of them, and they answered with little, and yet it
ridiculed their offering. Such a paradox they could not understand, and
therefore sank into listless indifference, or shiftlessness, or reckless
bravado. There were, however, some--such as Josie, Jim and Ben--to whom
War, Hell, and Slavery were but childhood tales, whose young appetites
had been whetted to an edge by school and story and half-awakened
thought. Ill could they be content, born without and beyond the World.
And their weak wings beat against their barriers,--barriers of caste,
of youth, of life; at last, in dangerous moments, against everything
that opposed even a whim.

ERE SLEEP COMES DOWN TO SOOTHE THE WEARY EYES

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,
Which all the day with ceaseless care have sought
The magic gold which from the seeker flies;
Ere dreams put on the gown and cap of thought,
And make the waking world a world of lies,--
Of lies most palpable, uncouth, forlorn,
That say life's full of aches and tears and sighs,--
Oh, how with more than dreams the soul is torn,
Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.

Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,
Now all the griefs and heartaches we have known
Come up like pois'nous vapors that arise
From some base witch's caldron, when the crone,
To work some potent spell, her magic plies.
The past which held its share of bitter pain,
Whose ghost we prayed that Time might exorcise,
Comes up, is lived and suffered o'er again,