And the world whistled in his ears.
XIV
Of the Sorrow Songs
I walk through the churchyard
To lay this body down;
I know moon-rise, I know star-rise;
I walk in the moonlight, I walk in the starlight;
I'll lie in the grave and stretch out my arms,
I'll go to judgment in the evening of the day,
And my soul and thy soul shall meet that day,
When I lay this body down.
NEGRO SONG.
They that walked in darkness sang songs in the olden days--
Sorrow Songs--for they were weary at heart. And so before
each thought that I have written in this book I have set a
phrase, a haunting echo of these weird old songs in which the
soul of the black slave spoke to men. Ever since I was a child
these songs have stirred me strangely. They came out of the
South unknown to me, one by one, and yet at once I knew
them as of me and of mine. Then in after years when I came
to Nashville I saw the great temple builded of these songs
towering over the pale city. To me Jubilee Hall seemed ever
made of the songs themselves, and its bricks were red with
the blood and dust of toil. Out of them rose for me morning,
noon, and night, bursts of wonderful melody, full of the
voices of my brothers and sisters, full of the voices of the
past.
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