To the coal black maid
The white man said,
"You must yield your honor to me,
For I am king
Of everything,
Ay! king of land and sea!"
Now a beast or a bird mates but with
its kind,
Yet a man will follow the lust of his
mind.
The pitiless skies
Heard the black girl's cries
And men turned an ear of stone.
For the good God gave
To the king his slave
And the world should let them alone.
And why should it talk of the white
man's sin
When the black girl's child has a tawny
skin?
The black man said
To the snow white maid:
"You must yield to my brutal will.
I am morally blind
And I hate your kind,
And I know how to throttle and kill.
"I have no brains, but my sinews are
strong
With the grudge of a hundred years of
wrong."
The white girl's cry
Rose wide and high.
It hurt the ears of the world;
Then blind and stark
Out into the dark
A blundering soul was hurled.
For woman's honor all men will fight
And avenge her wrongs--if her skin be
white.
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
The Colored American Magazine VI(10), October 1903, p. [695]-696.
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