|Stedman and Hutchinson, comps. A Library of American Literature:|
An Anthology in Eleven Volumes. 1891.
Vols. VIVIII: Literature of the Republic, Part III., 18351860
|Ethiopia Saluting the Colors|
|By Walt Whitman (18191892)|
[Leaves of Grass.
1855.Leaves of Grass, and Two Rivulets: Centennial Edition.
1876.Leaves of Grass: with additions.
WHO are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human,
|With your woolly-white and turband head, and bare bony feet?|
|Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet?|
|(Tis while our army lines Carolinas sands and pines,|
|Forth from thy hovel door thou Ethiopia comst to me,|| 5|
|As under doughty Sherman I march toward the sea.)|
|Me master years a hundred since from my parents sunderd,|
|A little child, they caught me as the savage beast is caught,|
|Then hither me across the sea the cruel slaver brought.|
|No further does she say, but lingering all the day,|| 10|
|Her high-borne turband head she wags, and rolls her darkling eye,|
|And courtesies to the regiments, the guidons moving by.|
|What is it fateful woman, so blear, hardly human?|
|Why wag your head with turban bound, yellow, red and green?|
|Are the things so strange and marvelous you see or have seen?|| 15|