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Leaves of Grass (1881-82)
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ETHIOPIA SALUTING THE COLORS.
WHO are you dusky woman, so ancient hardly human, |
With your woolly-white and turban'd head, and bare bony feet? |
Why rising by the roadside here, do you the colors greet? |
('Tis while our army lines Carolina's sands and pines, |
Forth from thy hovel door thou Ethiopia com'st to me, |
As under doughty Sherman I march toward the sea.) |
Me master years a hundred since from my parents sunder'd, |
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, |
Her high-borne turban'd head she wags, and rolls her darkling
eye,
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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? |
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