I found a twilight land,
    Where, hardly hid, the sun
    Sent softly-saddened rays of
    Red and brown to burn the iron soil
    And bathe the snow-white peaks
    In mighty splendor.

    Black were the men,
    Hard-haired and silent-slow,
    Moving as shadows,
    Bending with face of fear to earthward;
    And women there were none.

    “Woman, woman, woman!”
    I cried in mounting terror. 
    “Woman and Child!”
    And the cry sang back
    Through heaven, with the
    Whirring of almighty wings.

    Wings, wings, endless wings,—­
    Heaven and earth are wings;
    Wings that flutter, furl, and fold,
    Always folding and unfolding,
    Ever folding yet again;
    Wings, veiling some vast
    And veiled face,
    In blazing blackness,
    Behind the folding and unfolding,
    The rolling and unrolling of
    Almighty wings!

    I saw the black men huddle,
    Fumed in fear, falling face downward;
    Vainly I clutched and clawed,
    Dumbly they cringed and cowered,
    Moaning in mournful monotone: 

O Freedom, O Freedom,
O Freedom over me;
Before I’ll be a slave,
I’ll be buried in my grave,
And go home to my God,

            And be free.

It was angel-music
From the dead,
And ever, as they sang,
Some winged thing of wings, filling all heaven,
Folding and unfolding, and folding yet again,

Tore out their blood and entrails,
’Til I screamed in utter terror;
And a silence came—­
A silence and the wailing of a babe.

    Then, at last, I saw and shamed;
    I knew how these dumb, dark, and dusky things
    Had given blood and life,
    To fend the caves of underground,
    The great black caves of utter night,
    Where earth lay full of mothers
    And their babes.

    Little children sobbing in darkness,
    Little children crying in silent pain,
    Little mothers rocking and groping and struggling,
    Digging and delving and groveling,
    Amid the dying-dead and dead-in-life
    And drip and dripping of warm, wet blood,
    Far, far beneath the wings,—­
    The folding and unfolding of almighty wings.

    I bent with tears and pitying hands,
    Above these dusky star-eyed children,—­
    Crinkly-haired, with sweet-sad baby voices,
    Pleading low for light and love and living—­
    And I crooned: 

    “Little children weeping there,
    God shall find your faces fair;
    Guerdon for your deep distress,
    He shall send His tenderness;
    For the tripping of your feet
    Make a mystic music sweet
    In the darkness of your hair;
    Light and laughter in the air—­
    Little children weeping there,
    God shall find your faces fair!”