Songs Of Innocence
The Little Black Boy
- 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,
- And sitting down before the heat of day,
- She took me on her lap and kissed 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;
- And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
- Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
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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 sunburnt face
- 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 & care,
- And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.’”
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- Thus did my mother say, and kissed 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
- 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.
- --oOo-- -