Stories in Verse | Page 5

iron-black steeds came spurning
The ground in wild disdain;
I
caught them in an instant,
And held them by the rein.
It seems the man had fainted
In his elegant coupé;
I saw his face a
moment,
And then I turned away,
Wishing my steps had led me

Through other streets that day.
Some one who saw the rescue
Afterward told him my name.
For
the first in many a season,
Beneath our roof he came.
I said I was
deserving
Little of praise or blame.
It was my uncle's face in the carriage;
He made regret of the past;

No more of my love or wishes
Would he be the iconoclast;
On a
gala night at his mansion
We should learn to be friends at last.
XXII.
HELIOTROPE.
Let my soul and thine commune,
Heliotrope.
O'er the way I hear the swoon
Of the music; and the
moon,
Like a moth above a bloom,
Shines upon the world below.

In God's hand the world we know,
Is but as a flower in mine.
Let
me see thy heart divine

Heliotrope.
Thy rare odor is thy soul,
Heliotrope.
Could I save the golden bowl,
And yet change my soul
to yours,
I would do so for a day,
Just to hear my neighbors say:

"Lo! the spirit he immures
Is as fragrant as a flower;
It will wither
in an hour;
Surely he has stol'n the bliss,
For we know the odor is
Heliotrope."
Have you love and have you fear,
Heliotrope?
Has a dew-drop been thy tear?
Has the south-wind
been thy sigh?
Let thy soul make mine reply,
By some sense, on
brain or hand,
Let me know and understand,
Heliotrope.
In thy native land, Peru,
Heliotrope,
There are worshippers of light--
They might better
worship you;
But they worship not as I.
You must tell her what I
say,
When I take you 'cross the way,
For to-night your petals prove

The Devotion of my love,
Heliotrope.
'Tis time we go, breath o' bee,
Heliotrope.
All the house is lit for me;
Here's the room where we
may dwell,
Filled with guests delectable.
Hark! I hear the silver bell

Ever tinkling at her throat.
I have thought it was a boat,
By the
Graces put afloat,
On the billows of her heart.
I have thought it was
a boat
With a bird in it, whose part
Was a solitary note.
Now I
know 'tis Heliotrope
That the moonlight, bursting ope,
Changed to

silver on her throat.
Let us watch the dancers go;
_She_ is dancing
in the row.
Sweetest flower that ever was,
I shall give you as I pass,
Heliotrope.
KARAGWE, AN AFRICAN.
PART FIRST.
This is his story as I gathered it;
The simple story of a plain, true man.

I cling with Abraham Lincoln to the fact,
That they who make a
nation truly great
Are plain men, scattered in each walk of life.
To
them, my words. And if I cut, perchance.
Against the rind of
prejudice, and disclose
The fruit of truth, it is for the love of truth;

And truth, I hold with Joubert, to consist
In seeing things and persons
as God sees.
I.
An African, thick lipped, and heavy heeled,
With woolly hair, large
eyes, and even teeth,
A forehead high, and beetling at the brows

Enough to show a strong perceptive thought
Ran out beyond the
eyesight in all things--
A negro with no claim to any right,
A savage
with no knowledge we possess
Of science, art, or books, or
government--
Slave from a slaver to the Georgia coast,
His life
disposed of at the market rate;
Yet in the face of all, a plain, true
man--
Lowly and ignorant, yet brave and good,
Karagwe, named
for his native tribe.
His buyer was the planter, Dalton Earl,
Of Valley Earl, an owner of
broad lands,
Whose wife, in some gray daybreak of the past,
Had
tarried with the night, and passed away;
But left him, as the marriage
ring of death
Was slipped upon her finger, a fair child.
He called
this daughter Coralline. To him
She was a spray of whitest coral,
found
Upon the coast where death's impatient sea
Hems in the

narrow continent of life.
II.
Each day brought health and strength to Karagwe.
Each day he
worked upon the cotton-field,
And every boll he picked had thought
in it.
He labored, but his mind was otherwhere;
Strange fancies,
faced with ignorance and doubt,
Came peering in, each jostling each
aside,
Like men, who in a crowded market-place,
Push 'gainst the
mob, to see some pageant pass.
All things were new and wonderful to him.
What were the papers that
his owner read?
The marks and characters, what could they mean?

If speech, what then the use of oral speech?
At last by digging round
the spreading roots
Of this one thought, he found the treasure out--

Knowledge: this was the burden which was borne
By these black,
busy, ant-like characters.
But how acquire the meaning of the signs?
He found a scrap of paper
in the lane,
And put it by, and saved it carefully,
Till once, when all
alone, he drew it forth,
And gazed at it, and strove to learn its sense.

But while he studied, Dalton Earl rode by,
And angered at the
indication shown,
Snatched rudely at the paper in his hand,
And
tore it up, commanding that the slave
Have fifty lashes for this breach
of law.
Long