The Old Slave-Music
Blow back the breath of the bird,
Scatter the song through the air,
There was music you never heard,
And cannot hear anywhere.
It was not the sob of the vain
In the old, old dark so sweet,
(I shall never hear it again,)
Nor the coming of fairy feet.
It was music and music alone,
Not a sigh from a lover’s mouth;
Now it comes in a phantom moan
From the dead and buried South.
It was savage and fierce and glad,
It played with the heart at will;
Oh, what a wizard touch it had—
Oh, if I could hear it still!
Were they slaves? They were not then;
The music had made them free.
They were happy women and men—
What more do we care to be?
There is blood and blackness and dust,
There are terrible things to see,
There are stories of swords that rust,
Between that music and me.
Dark ghosts with your ghostly tunes
Come back till I laugh through tears;
Dance under the sunken moons,
Dance over the grassy years!
Hush, hush—I know it, I say;
Your armies were bright and brave,
But the music they took away
Was worth—whatever they gave.
Source: “Words for the Hour”: A New Anthology of American Civil War Poetry, edited by Faith Barrett and Cristanne Miller (University of Massachusetts Press, 2005)