Let the thick veil glow thin,
At sunrise--at sunrise--
Let the strange eyes peer in,
The red, the black, and the white faces
Of the still living dead
Of the three races.
Let a quaint voice begin:
_Voice of an Indian_
"Gone from the land,
We leave the music of our names,
As pleasant as the sound of waters;
Gone is the log-lodge and the skin tepee,
And moons ago the ghost-canoe brought home
The latest of our sons and daughters--
Yet still we linger in tobacco smoke
And in the rustling fields of maize;
Faint are the tracks our moccasins have left,
But they are there, down all your ways."
_Voice of a Slave_
"We do not talk
Of hours in the rice
When days were long,
Nor of old masters
Who are with us here
Beyond all right or wrong.
Only white afternoons come back,
When in the fields
We reached the Mercy Seat
On wings of song."
_Voice of a Planter_
"Nothing moves there but the night wind,
Blowing the mosses like smoke;
All would be silent as moonlight
But for the owl in the oak--
Stairways that lead up to nothing--
Windows like terrible scars--
Snakes on a log in the cistern
Peering at stars.
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