The sudden wild thunder-
storms of the South awed and impressed the Negroes,--at
times the rumbling seemed to them "mournful," at times
imperious:
"My Lord calls me,
He calls me by the thunder,
The trumpet sounds it in my soul."
The monotonous toil and exposure is painted in many words.
One sees the ploughmen in the hot, moist furrow, singing:
"Dere's no rain to wet you,
Dere's no sun to burn you,
Oh, push along, believer,
I want to go home."
The bowed and bent old man cries, with thrice-repeated wail:
"O Lord, keep me from sinking down,"
and he rebukes the devil of doubt who can whisper:
"Jesus is dead and God's gone away."
Yet the soul-hunger is there, the restlessness of the savage,
the wail of the wanderer, and the plaint is put in one little phrase:
My soul wants something that's new, that's new
Over the inner thoughts of the slaves and their relations one
with another the shadow of fear ever hung, so that we get but
glimpses here and there, and also with them, eloquent omis-
sions and silences. Mother and child are sung, but seldom
father; fugitive and weary wanderer call for pity and affec-
tion, but there is little of wooing and wedding; the rocks and
the mountains are well known, but home is unknown.
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