The Negro Poetess, by William Marsh
"Filled with the praise of Him who gives the light,
And draws the sable curtains of the night,
Let placid slumbers soothe each weary mind,
At morn to wake more heavenly and refined:
So shall the labours of the day begin
More pure and guarded from the snares of sin."
The above are from a "Hymn to the Evening;" the following from "Thoughts on Imagination:"
"Imagination! who can sing thy force;
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
The empyreal palace of the thundering God:
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind;
From star to star, the mental optics rove,
Measure the skies and range the realms above;
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
Or with new worlds amaze the unbounded soul."
Are blacks only connecting links between whites and brutes? Far from Britons and far from Americans be the thought, that justice and humanity have geographical limits; or that a few darker shades of colour constitute or incapacitate for mental attainments, still less for the highest of all privileges and services, the knowledge and love and service of God our Saviour. Let them evermore be treated as fellow-men, and believers among them as fellow-christians. With the latter we must sit down in the kingdom of God, or be excluded ourselves. And can it be true, that in America, of all places, they are a proscribed race, and that no man will unite with them even in an act of worship? This philosophy, this christianity, is indeed only skin-deep; but perhaps it will in innumerable instances be found, that the most christian heart lies under the darkest skin. God grant that such prejudices may speedily be banished, and men of every colour know the truth and live as brethren!
William Marsh.
Birmingham.