For kindly consenting to their republication
here, in altered and extended form, I must thank the publishers
of the Atlantic Monthly, The World's Work, the Dial, The
New World, and the Annals of the American Academy of
Political and Social Science. Before each chapter, as now
printed, stands a bar of the Sorrow Songs,--some echo of
haunting melody from the only American music which welled
up from black souls in the dark past. And, finally, need I add
that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the
flesh of them that live within the Veil?
W.E.B Du B.
ATLANTA, GA., FEB. 1, 1903.
I
Of Our Spiritual Strivings
O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,
All night long crying with a mournful cry,
As I lie and listen, and cannot understand
The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,
O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?
All night long the water is crying to me.
Unresting water, there shall never be rest
Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,
And the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;
And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,
All life long crying without avail,
As the water all night long is crying to me.
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