The Souls fo Black Folk

The Forethought

"Before each chapter, as now printed, stands a bar of the Sorrow Songs,-some echo of haunting melody from the only American music which welled up from black souls in the dark past. And, finally, need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that lived within the Veil?"

Chapter 1. Of Our Spiritual Strivings

"O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand, 

     All night long crying with a mournful cry,

As I  lie and listen, and cannot understand

     The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,

  O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?

        All night long the water is crying to me.

Unresting watter, ther shall never be rest

     Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,

And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;

     And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,

  All life long crying without avail,

       As the water all night long is crying to me.

Arthur Symons"

Chapter 2. Of the Dawn of Freedom

"Careless seems the great Avenger;

History's lessons but record

One death-grapple in the darkness

'Twixt old systems and the Word;

Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne;

Yet that scaffold sways the future,

And behind the dim unknown

Standeth God within the shadow

Keeping watch above His own.

Lowell"

Chapter 3. Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others

"From birth till death enslaved; in words, in deed, unmanned!

Hereditary bondsmen! know ye not

Who would be free themselves must strike the blow?

Byron"

Chapter 4. Of the Meaning of Progress

Willst Du Deine Macht verkunden,

Wahle sie die frei von Sunden,

Steh'n in Deinum ew'gen Haus!

Deine Geister sende aus!

Die Unsterblichen, die Reinen,

Die nicht fuhlen, die nicht weinen!

Nicht die zarte Jungfrau wahle,

Nicht der Hirtin weiche Seele!

Schiller"

Chapter 5. Of the Wings of Atalanta

"O black boy of Atlanta!

   But half was spoken;

The slave's chains and the master's

   like are broken;

The one curse of the races

   Held both in tether;

They are rising -all are rising-

   The black and white together.

Whittier"

Chapter 6. Of the Training of Black Men

"Why, if the Soul can fling the Dust aside,

And naked on the Air of Heaven ride, 

   Weren't not a Shame- wer't not a Shame for him

In this clay carcase crippled to abide?

Omar Khayyam (Fitzgerald)"

Chapter 7. Of the Black Belt

"I am black but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,

As the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon

Look not upon me, because I am black,

Because the sun hath looked upon me:

My mother's children were angry with me;

They made me the keeper of the vineyards;

But mine own vineyard have I not kept.

The Song of Solomon" 

Chapter 8. Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece

"But the Brute said in his breast, "Till the mills I grind have ceased,

The riches shall be dust of dust, dry ashes be the feast!

     "On the strong and cunning few

     Cynic favors I will strew;

I will stuff their maw with overplus until their spirit dies;

     From the patient the the low

     I will take the joys they know;

     They shall hunger after vanities and still an-hugnered go.

Madness shall be on the people, ghastly jealousies arise;

Brother's blood shall cry on brother up the dead and empty skies."

William Vaughn Moody."

Chapter 9. Of the Sons of Master and Man

"Life treads on life, and heart on heart;

We press too close in church and mart

To keep a dream or grave apart.

Mrs. Browning."

Chapter 10. Of the Faith of the Fathers

"Dim face of Beauty haunting all the world,

   Fair face of Beauty all too fair to see,

Where the lost stars adown the heavens are hurled,-

     There, there alone for thee

     May white peace be.

Beauty, sad face of Beauty, Mystery, Wonder,

   What are these dreams to foolish babbling men

Who cry with little noises 'neath the thunder

     Of Ages ground to sand,

     To a little sand.

Fiona Macleod"

Chapter 11. Of the Passing of the First-Born

"O sister, sister, thy first-begotten,

The hands that cling and the feet that follow,

The voice of the child's blood crying yet,

Who hath remembered me? who hath forgotten?

Thous has forgotten, O summer swallow,

But the world shall end when I forget.

Swinburne"

Chapter 12. Of Alexander Crummell

"Then from the Dawn it seemed there came, but faint

As from beyond the limit of the world,

Like the last echo born of a great cry,

Sounds, as if some fair city were one voice

Around a king returning from his wars.

Tennyson"

Chapter 13. Of the Coming of John

"What bring they 'neath the midnight,

     Beside the River-sea?

They bring the human heart wherein

     No nightly calm can be;

That droppeth never with the wind,

     Nor drieth with the dew;

O calm it, God; thy calm is broad

     To cover spirits too.

       The river floweth on.

"Mrs. Browning."

Chapter 14. The Sorrow Songs

"I walk through the churchywar

To lay this body down;

I know moon-rise, I know star-rise;

I walk in the moonlight, I walk in the starlight;

I'll lie in the grave and stretch out my arms,

I'll go to judgment in the evening of the day,

And my soul and thy soul shall meet that day,

When I lay this body down.

Negro Song."

The Afterthought
"Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world-wilderness. Let there spring, Gentle One, from out its leaves vigor of thought and thoughtful deed to reap the harvest wonderful. ... Thus in Thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed."

The Soul of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois