[AFRICA AND HER GODMOTHER.]
With shoes of crystal peace and glee
Christmas his clients proves:
They're misfits for those masters pale
And their white lady-loves;
But O they fit black boys and girls
Who clean their knives and stoves!
I slipt from out the white men's church,
The northern chants rang cold,
And with the preacher's war-time words
My heart it would not hold,
Gay hymns and I alike had grown
In exile grave and old.
I said 'I'll wander from the town
This cheerless Christmas Day.'
A church stood up beside my road,
And I turn'd in to pray.
Buff-brick its walls were, and its roof
Of ridg'd unlovely grey.
I enter'd in, and joy was there
The Mass had just begun.
They filled the place from screen to door
The children of the sun.
Me seem'd that southern sun was glass'd
In eyes of ev'ryone.
The server-men had lawn and lace
And crimson pageantry,
And boys were in their best, and girls
Wore kerchiefs bright to see.
Me seem'd those bare brown feet were shod
With crystal peace and glee.
The incense-smoke it skein 'd and spir'd,
The vowell'd hymns rang clear,
A shrill bell rung by a brown hand
Said Christ was very near.
Me seem'd a sun-tann'd Angel stoopt
And caroll'd in mine ear.
I Bless God for this our Christmas Ball
About our Christmas Board!
Our Church that faery Godmother
Her child hath not ignor'd,
And Africa, with heart in sky,
Is dancing to the Lord.
The Old World's and the New World's drudge
Whom few would praise before
Now from the kitchen hath been claim 'd,
The stable and the store,
Christ claims her heart to dance with his
Where Europe's danced of yore.'
With shoes of crystal peace and glee
Christmas his clients proves:
They're misfits for those masters pale
And their white lady-loves;
But O they fit black boys and girls
Who clean their knives and stoves!