The Souls of Black Folk W. E. B. Du Bois (nonfiction book recommendations .txt) đ
- Author: W. E. B. Du Bois
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He died at eventide, when the sun lay like a brooding sorrow above the western hills, veiling its face; when the winds spoke not, and the trees, the great green trees he loved, stood motionless. I saw his breath beat quicker and quicker, pause, and then his little soul leapt like a star that travels in the night and left a world of darkness in its train. The day changed not; the same tall trees peeped in at the windows, the same green grass glinted in the setting sun. Only in the chamber of death writhed the worldâs most piteous thingâ âa childless mother.
I shirk not. I long for work. I pant for a life full of striving. I am no coward, to shrink before the rugged rush of the storm, nor even quail before the awful shadow of the Veil. But hearken, O Death! Is not this my life hard enoughâ âis not that dull land that stretches its sneering web about me cold enoughâ âis not all the world beyond these four little walls pitiless enough, but that thou must needs enter hereâ âthou, O Death? About my head the thundering storm beat like a heartless voice, and the crazy forest pulsed with the curses of the weak; but what cared I, within my home beside my wife and baby boy? Wast thou so jealous of one little coign of happiness that thou must needs enter thereâ âthou, O Death?
A perfect life was his, all joy and love, with tears to make it brighterâ âsweet as a summerâs day beside the Housatonic. The world loved him; the women kissed his curls, the men looked gravely into his wonderful eyes, and the children hovered and fluttered about him. I can see him now, changing like the sky from sparkling laughter to darkening frowns, and then to wondering thoughtfulness as he watched the world. He knew no color-line, poor dearâ âand the Veil, though it shadowed him, had not yet darkened half his sun. He loved the white matron, he loved his black nurse; and in his little world walked souls alone, uncolored and unclothed. Iâ âyea, all menâ âare larger and purer by the infinite breadth of that one little life. She who in simple clearness of vision sees beyond the stars said when he had flown, âHe will be happy There; he ever loved beautiful things.â And I, far more ignorant, and blind by the web of mine own weaving, sit alone winding words and muttering, âIf still he be, and he be There, and there be a There, let him be happy, O Fate!â
Blithe was the morning of his burial, with bird and song and sweet-smelling flowers. The trees whispered to the grass, but the children sat with hushed faces. And yet it seemed a ghostly unreal dayâ âthe wraith of Life. We seemed to rumble down an unknown street behind a little white bundle of posies, with the shadow of a song in our ears. The busy city dinned about us; they did not say much, those pale-faced hurrying men and women; they did not say muchâ âthey only glanced and said, âNiggers!â
We could not lay him in the ground there in Georgia, for the earth there is strangely red; so we bore him away to the northward, with his flowers and his little folded hands. In vain, in vain!â âfor where, O God! beneath thy broad blue sky shall my dark baby rest in peaceâ âwhere Reverence dwells, and Goodness, and a Freedom that is free?
All that day and all that night there sat an awful gladness in my heartâ ânay, blame me not if I see the world thus darkly through the Veilâ âand my soul whispers ever to me saying, âNot dead, not dead, but escaped; not bond, but free.â No bitter meanness now shall sicken his baby heart till it die a living death, no taunt shall madden his happy boyhood. Fool that I was to think or wish that this little soul should grow choked and deformed within the Veil! I might have known that yonder deep unworldly look that ever and anon floated past his eyes was peering far beyond this narrow Now. In the poise of his little curl-crowned head did there not sit all that wild pride of being which his father had hardly crushed in his own heart? For what, forsooth, shall a Negro want with pride amid the studied humiliations of fifty million fellows? Well sped, my boy, before the world had dubbed your ambition insolence, had held your ideals unattainable, and taught you to cringe and bow. Better far this nameless void that stops my life than a sea of sorrow for you.
Idle words; he might have borne his burden more bravely than weâ âaye, and found it lighter too, some day; for surely, surely this is not the end. Surely there shall yet dawn some mighty morning to lift the Veil and set the prisoned free. Not for meâ âI shall die in my bondsâ âbut for fresh young souls who have not known the night and waken to the morning; a morning when men ask of the workman, not âIs he white?â but âCan he work?â When men ask artists, not âAre they black?â but âDo they know?â Some morning this may be, long, long years to come. But now there wails, on that dark shore within the Veil, the same deep voice, Thou shalt forego! And all have I foregone at that command, and with small complaintâ âall save that fair young form
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