<h3><SPAN name="5">THE LITTLE BLACK BOY</SPAN></h3>
My mother bore me in the southern wild,<br/>
And I am black, but O my soul is white!<br/>
White as an angel is the English child,<br/>
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.
<br/><br/>My mother taught me underneath a tree,<br/>
And, sitting down before the heat of day,<br/>
She took me on her lap and kissed me,<br/>
And, pointing to the East, began to say:
<br/><br/>‘Look on the rising sun: there God does live,<br/>
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,<br/>
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive<br/>
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
<br/><br/>‘And we are put on earth a little space,<br/>
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;<br/>
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face<br/>
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
<br/><br/>‘For, when our souls have learned the heat to bear,<br/>
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,<br/>
Saying, “Come out from the grove, my love and care,<br/>
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.”�’
<br/><br/>Thus did my mother say, and kissed me,<br/>
And thus I say to little English boy.<br/>
When I from black, and he from white cloud free,<br/>
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,
<br/><br/>I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear<br/>
To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee;<br/>
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,<br/>
And be like him, and he will then love me.
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