Song of the Son
Pour O pour that parting soul in songO pour it in the sawdust glow of
Into the velvet pine-smoke air tonight,
And let the valley carry it along.
And let the valley carry it along.
O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree,
So scant of grass, so proligate of pines,
Now hust before an epoch's sun
Thy son, in time,
I have returned to thee,
Thy son,
I have in time returned to thee.
In time, for though the sun is setting onA song-lit race of slaves, it has not set;
Though late,
O soil, it is not too late
To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving, soon gone,
Leaving, to catch thy plaintive soul soon gone.
O Negro slaves, dark purple ripened plums,
Squeezed, and bursting in the pine-wood air,
Passing, before they stripped the old tree
One plum was saved for me, one seed becomesan everlasting song, a singing tree,
Caroling softly souls of slavery,
What they were, and what they are to me,
Caroling softly souls of slavery.
Jean Toomer
Other author posts
Georgia Dusk
The sky, lazily disdaining to The setting sun, too indolent to holdA lengthened tournament for flashing gold, Passively darkens for night's barbeque, A feast of moon and men and barking hounds
November Cotton Flower
Boll-weevil's coming, and the winter's cold, Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old, And cotton, scarce as any southern snow, Was vanishing; the branch, so pinched and slow,
Harvest Song
I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown All my oats are cradled But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them And I hunger
Reapers
Black reapers with the sound of steel on Are sharpening scythes I see them place the In their hip-pockets as a thing that's done,
