It is called _The Little Black Boy_."
_My mother bore me in the southern wild
And I am black, but O my soul is white
White as an angel is the English child
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of the day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointing to the East, began to say:
"Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in the morning, joy in the noonday.
"And we are put on Earth a little space
That we may learn to bear the beams of love;
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
"For, when our souls have learned the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying, 'Come out from the grove, my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.'"
Thus did my mother say, and kissed me,
And thus I say to the little English boy.
When I from black, and he from white cloud free.
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy,
I'll shade him from the heat 'til he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father's knee;
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.
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