I love this poem: =]
The Little Black Boy by William Blake
- My mother bore me in the southern wild,
- And I am black, but O, my soul is white!
- White as an angel is the English child,
- But I am black, as if bereaved of light.
- My mother taught me underneath a tree,
- And, sitting down before the heat of day,
- She took me on her lap and kissèd me,
- And, pointing to the East, began to say:
- ‘Look at the rising sun: there God does live,
- And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
- And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
- Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
- ‘And we are put on earth a little space,
- That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
- And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
- Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
- ‘For when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear,
- The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
- Saying, “Come out from the grove, my love and care,
- And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.”‘
- Thus did my mother say, and kissèd me,
- And thus I say to little English boy.
- When I from black and he from white cloud free,
- And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,
- I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear
- To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee;
- And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
- And be like him, and he will then love me.
