“Do you want me to read it?” Before me sat half a dozen middle schoolers, watching with that wide-eyed curiosity and amazement that I know will be hidden in only a few short years. They watched and giggled and nodded their heads, some of them even cheering me on. They had already heard me read …
’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,Taught my benighted soul to understandThat there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.Some view our sable race with scornful eye,‘Their colour is a diabolic die.’Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.Phillis Wheatley, On Being Brought from Africa to America I first heard …
Continue reading Poetry: Wheatley – On Being Brought from Africa to America
In the bleak mid-winterFrosty wind made moan;Earth stood hard as iron,Water like a stone;Snow had fallen, snow on snow,Snow on snow,In the bleak mid-winterLong ago. I know very few poems by Christina Rossetti, but her winter and Christmas poems and songs have found a special place in my heart, and this one more than most. …
Out of the bosom of the Air, Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,Over the woodlands brown and bare, Over the harvest-fields forsaken, Silent, and soft, and slow Descends the snow.Even as our cloudy fancies take Suddenly shape in some divine expression,Even as the troubled heart doth make In the white countenance confession, The troubled sky reveals The grief it feels.This is …
"Never again? Why not again? Memory has power as real as thine." #Brontë
Madelyn Rose Craig 