Stories in Verse | Page 6

on his sentence pondered Karagwe.
Against the law? Who then
could make a law
Decreeing knowledge to a certain few,
To others
ignorance? Surely not God;
For God, the white-haired negro with a
text
Had said loved justice, and was friend to all.
If man, then the
authority was null.
The fifty lashes scourged the slave's bare back,
The red blood running
down at every stroke,
The dark skin clinging ghastly to the lash.
No
moan escaped him at the stinging pain.
Tremblingly he stood, and

patiently bore all;
His heart indignant, shaking his broad breast,

Strong as the heart that Hippodamia wept,
Which with the cold,
intrusive brass thrust through,
Shook even the Greek spear's
extremity.
III.
And so the negro's energy, made strong
By the one vile argument of
the lash,
Was given to learn the secret of the books.
He studied in
the woods, and by the fall
Which shoots down like an arrow from the
cliff,
Feathered with spray and barbed with hues of flint.
His books
were bits of paper printed on,
Found here and there, brought thither
by the wind.
Once standing near the bottom of the fall
And gazing
up, he saw upon the verge
Of the dark cliff above him, gathering
flowers,
His master's child, sweet Coralline; she leaned
Out over
the blank abyss, and smiled.
He climbed the bank, but ere he reached
the height,
A shriek rang out above the water's roar;
The babe had
fallen, and a quadroon girl
Lay fainting near, upon the treacherous
sward.
The babe had fallen, but with no injury yet.
Karagwe slipped
down upon a narrow ledge,
And reaching out, caught hold the little
frock,
Whose folds were tangled in a bending shrub,
And safely
drew the child back to the cliff.
The slave had favors shown him after
this,
Although he spoke not of the perilous deed,
Nor spoke of any
merit he had done.
IV.
By being always when he could alone,
By wandering often in the
woods and fields,
He came at last to live in revery.
But little
thought is there in revery,
But little thought, for most is useless dream;

And whoso dreams may never learn to act.
The dreamer and the
thinker are not kin.
Sweet revery is like a little boat
That idly drifts
along a listless stream--

A painted boat, afloat without an oar.

And nature brought strange meanings to the slave;
He loved the
breeze, and when he heard it pass
The agitated pines, he fancied it

The silken court-dress of the lady Wind,
Bustling among the foliage,
as she went
To waltz the whirlwind on the distant sea.
The negro preacher with the text had said
That when men died, the
soul lived on and on;
If so, of what material was the soul?
The eye
could not behold it; why not then
The viewless air be filled with
living souls?
Not only these, but other shapes and forms
Might
dwell unseen about us at all times.
If air was only matter rarefied,

Why could not things still more impalpable
Have real existence?
Whence came our thoughts?
As angels came to shepherds in Chaldee;

They were not ours. He fancied that most thoughts
Were whispered
to the soul, or good, or bad.
The bad were like a demon, a vast shape

With measureless black wings, that when it dared,
Placed its
clawed foot upon the necks of men,
And with the very shadow of
itself,
Made their lives darker than a starless night.
He did not strive
to picture out the good,
Or give to them a figure; but he knew
No
glory of the sunset could compare
With the clear splendor of one
noble deed.
He proudly dreamed that to no other mind
Had these imaginings been
uttered.
Alas! poor heart, how many have awoke,
And found their
newest thoughts as old as time--
Their brightest fancies woven in the
threads
Of ancient poems, history or romance,
And knowledge still
elusive and far off.
V.
The days that lengthen into years went on.
The quadroon girl who
fainted on the cliff
Was Ruth; now, blooming into womanhood,
She
looked on Karagwe, and seeing there
Something above the level of
the slave,
Watched him with interest in all his ways.

At first through pity was she drawn to him.
While both were sitting
on a rustic seat,
Near the tall mansion where the planter dwelt,
A
drunken overseer came straggling past,
And seeing in the dusk a
female form,
Swayed up to her, and caught her by the arm,
And
with an insult, strove to drag her on.
Ruth spoke not; but the negro,
with one grasp
Upon the white man, caused her quick release.
He
turned, and in the face struck Karagwe.
The patient slave did not
return the blow,
But the next day they tied him to a post,
And fifty
stripes his naked shoulders flayed.
Stricken in mind at being deeply
wronged,
Filled with a noble scorn, that men most learned
Would
so degrade a brother race of men,
He wept at heart; no groan fled
through his lips.
Yet in a few days he was forced to go
And work beneath the
intolerable sun,
Picking the cotton-boll, and bearing it
In a rude
basket, on his wounded back,
Up a steep hill-side to the cotton gin.
VI.
Ruth, as she walked the pebbled garden lanes,
Or daily in