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.
To Mercy Pity Peace and Love All pray in their distress, And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy Pity Peace and Love Is God our father dear. And Mercy Pity Peace and Love Is Man his child and care. Then every man of every clime That prays in his distress Prays to the human form divine: Love Mercy Pity Peace. And all must love the human form In heathen, Turk, or Jew. Where Mercy, Love and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too.
He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing and mortal eye can see, does not imagine at all.
What is the price of experience? Do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price of all the man hath, his house, his wife, his children.
What seems to be, is, to those to whom it seems to be, and is productive of the most dreadful consequences to those to whom it seems to be, even of torments, despair, eternal death.
For I dance And drink and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength and breath And the want Of thought is death Then am I A happy fly If I live Or if I die