To leave the dear South. She choked. He patted her hand.
He hoped they would stay in Canada for a while.
The blue or the green? It was dreadfully hard to choose,
And with all the letters to write—and Jim Merrihew
And that nice Alabama Major— She heard the bells
Ring for a wedding, but this was a different groom,
This was a white-haired man with stars on his coat,
This was an Order wrapped in an English voice.
Honey, sugar-lump honey I love so dearly,
You have eluded the long pursuit that sought you,
You have eluded the hands that would so enclose you
And with strange passion force you. What was this passion?
We do not know, you and I, but we would not bear it
And are gone free. So at last, if fair girls must marry,
As young girls should, it is after another fashion
And not with youth but wisely. So we are ransomed,
And I am yours forever and you are mine,
Honey, sugar-lump honey. So we attain,
The white-haired bridegrooms with the stars on their coats
And yet have the beaus to dance with, for we like dancing,
So all the world finds our wifely devotion charming,
So we play all day in the heat of the sun.
She held the blue dress under her chin once more
And smoothed it with one white hand. Then she put it down
Smiling a little. No, it couldn’t go in,
But she would see if she couldn’t help Henry pack,
And if she did, the blue could go with his shirts.
It hardly mattered, leaving some shirts behind.
Sherman’s buzzin’ along to de sea,
Jubili, Jubilo!
Sherman’s buzzin’ along to de sea,
Like Moses ridin’ on a bumblebee,
Settin’ de prisoned and de humble free!
Hit’s de year of Jubilo!
Massa was de whale wid de big inside,
Jubili, Jubilo!
Massa was de lion and de lion’s hide.
But de Lord God smacked him in his hardheart pride,
And de whale unswallered, and de lion died!
Hit’s de year of Jubilo!
Oh, hit don’t matter if you’s black or tan,
Jubili, Jubilo!
Hit don’t matter if you’s black or tan,
When you hear de noise of de freedom-ban’
You’s snatched bald-headed to de Promise Lan’,
Hit’s de year of Jubilo!
Oh, hit don’t matter if you pine or ail,
Jubili, Jubilo!
Hit don’t matter if you pine or ail,
Hit don’t matter if you’s been in jail,
De Lord’s got mercy for your mumblin’ tale!
Hit’s de year of Jubilo!
Every nigger’s gwine to own a mule,
Jubili, Jubilo!
Every nigger’s gwine to own a mule,
An’ live like Adam in de Golden Rule,
An’ send his chillun to de white-folks’ school!
In de year of Jubilo!
Fall down on your knees and bless de Lord,
Jubili, Jubilo!
Fall down on your knees and bless de Lord,
Dat chased old Pharaoh wid a lightnin’-sword,
And rose up Izzul fum de withered gourd,
Hit’s de year of Jubilo!
Shout thanksgivin’ and shout it loud!
Jubili, Jubilo!
Shout thanksgivin’ and shout it loud,
We was dead and buried in de Lazrus-shroud,
But de Lord came down in a glory-cloud,
An’ He gave us Jubilo!
So Sherman goes from Atlanta to the sea
Through the red-earth heart of the land, through the pine-smoke haze
Of the warm, last months of the year. In the evenings
The skies are green as the thin, clear ice on the pools
That melts to water again in the heat of noon.
A few black trees are solemn against those skies.
The soldiers feel the winter touching the air
With a little ice. But when the sun has come up,
When they halt at noonday, mopping their sweaty brows,
The skies are blue and soft and without a cloud.
Strange march, half-war, half trooping picnic-parade,
Cutting a ruinous swathe through the red earth land;
March of the hardy bummers and coffee-coolers
Who, having been told to forage, loot as they can
And leave a wound that rankles for sixty years.
March of the honest, who did not loot when they could
And so are not remembered in Southern legend.
Rough-bearded Sherman riding the red-earth roads,
Writing home that his rascals are fat and happy,
Saying or else not saying that war is hell,
Saying he almost trembles himself to think
Of what will happen when Charleston falls in the hands
Of those same rascals—and yet, when we read that march,
Hardly the smoking dragon he has been called,
But the mere rough-handed man who rode with a hard
Bit through the land, unanxious to spare his foe
Nor grimly anxious to torture for torture’s sake,
Smashing this and that—and yet, in the end,
Giving such terms to the foe struck down at last
That the men in Washington disavow them and him
For over-kindness. So now, through the pine-smoke Fall,
The long worm of his army creeps toward Savannah
Leaving its swathe behind. In the ruined gardens
The buried silver lies well hid in the ground.
A looter pocks bullet-marks in an old oil-portrait.
A woman wails and rages against the thieves
Who carry her dead child’s clothes on their drunken bayonets.
A looter swings from a pine tree for thefts too crude.
A fresh-faced boy gets scars he will carry long
Hauling a crippled girl from a burning house,
But gets no thanks but hate from the thing he saved,
And everywhere,
A black earth stirs, a wind blows over black earth,
A wind blows into black faces, into old hands
Knotted with long rheumatics, cramped on the hoe,
Into old backs bent double over the cotton,
The wind of freedom, the wind of the jubilo.
They stray from the lost plantations like children strayed,
Grinning and singing, following the blue soldiers,
They steal from the lonesome cabins like runaways
Laden with sticks and bundles and conjur-charms;
A huge black mother carries her sucking child
Wrapped in a quilt, a slim brown girl and her lover
Wander November woods like Adam and Eve,
Living on roots and rabbits and liberty,
An old grey field hand dimly plods through the mud,
Looking for some vague place he has heard about
Where Linkum sits at a desk in his gold silk hat
With a bag of silver dollars in either hand
For every old grey field hand that comes to him,
All God’s chillun got shoes there and fine new clothes,
All God’s chillun got peace there and roastin’-ears,
Hills of barbecue, rivers of pot-licker,
Nobody’s got to work there, never no more.
His feet are sore with the road but he stumbles on,
A hundred, a thousand others stumble as he,
Chanting, dizzied, drunken with a strange fever,
A child’s delight, a brightness too huge
