As if the earth were breathing with long-taken breaths
And we were very near her heart.

No wonder that these faces show a tired dismay,
Looking on burning suns, and scarcely blithe in May;
Spring's coming is too fierce with life;
And summer is too long;
The stunted pine trees struggle with the sand
Till the eyes sicken with their dwarfing strife.

There are old women here among these island homes,
With dull brown eyes that look at something gray,
And tight silver hair, drawn back in lines,
Like the beach grass that's always blown one way;
With such a melancholy in their faces
I know that they have lived long in these places.
The tides, the hooting owls, the daylight moons,
The leprous lights and shadows of the mosses,
The funereal woodlands of these coasts,
Draped like a perpetual hearse,
And memories of an old war's ancient losses,
Dwell in their faces' shadows like gray ghosts.
And worse--
The terror of the black man always near--
The drab level of the ricefields and the marsh
Lends them a mask of fear.

PAGE TWO

SUNSHINE

This is a different page.
Do you suppose the sun here lavishes his heat
For nothing, in these islands by the sea?
No! The great green-mottled melons ripen in the fields,
Bleeding with scarlet, juicy pith deliriously;
And the exuberant yams grow golden, thick and sweet;
And white potatoes, in grave-rows,
With leaves as rough as cat tongues;
And pearly onions, and cabbages
With white flesh, sweet as chicken meat.

These the black boatmen bring to town
On barges, heaped with severed breasts of leaves,
Driven by _put-put_ engines
Down the long canals, quavering with song,
With hail and chuckle to the docks along,
Seeing their dark faces down below
Reduplicated in the sunset glow,
While from the shore stretch out the quivering lines
Of the flat, palm-like, reflected pines
That inland lie like ranges of dark hills in lines.
And so to town--
Weaving odd baskets of sweet grass,
Lazily and slow,
To sell in the arcaded market,
Where men sold their fathers not so long ago.
For all their poverty,
These patient black men live
A life rich in warm colors of the fields,
Sunshine and hearty foods,
Delighted with the gifts that earth can give,
And old tales of _Plateye_ an