Dying are earth's unborn-- The babes' wide eyes of genius and of joy, Poems and prayers, sun-glows and earth-songs, Great-pictured dreams, Enmarbled phantasies, High hymning heavens--all In this dread night Writhe and shriek and choke and die This long ghost-night-- While Thou art dumb.
Du Bois laments the loss of potential and creativity in the face of destruction and despair.
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To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.
To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes…
The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.