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Washington, D.C. in 1942 was not the easiest place in the world for a Negro to get along.

quote by Gordon Parks
Added by Lucian Velea
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The Eastiest Thing

Suddenly theres a meaning
To all my hoping and dreaming
And joy I have never felt before
Suddenly theres a reason
Something I can believe in
And finally I know what my heart is for
This is the easiest thing to do
Yes the easiest thing to do
Its as simple and as natural as
Breathing out and breathing in
Yes the easiest thing is loving you
Suddenly Im weightless
Feel I could fly or could walk on
With my feet never touching the ground
And I know Im not crazy
No the searching is over
And baby Ive found
This is the easiest thing to do
Its the easiest thing to do
Its as simple and as natural as
Breathing out and breathing in
Yes the easiest thing is loving you
Suddenly the sadness is gone
And I dont have to tell myself
To struggle through
To carry on
This is the easiest thing to do
Its the easiest thing to do
Its as simple and as natural as
Breathing out and breathing in
Yes the easiest thing is loving you
Yes the easiest thing is loving you
Yes the easiest thing is loving you

song performed by Vanessa Williams
Added by Lucian Velea
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The Easiest Thing

Suddenly theres meaning
To all my hoping and dreaming
And joy I have never felt before
Suddenly theres a reason
Something I can believe in
And finally I know what my heart is for
This is the easiest thing to do
Yes the easiest thing to do
Its as simple and natural as
Breathing out and breathing in
Yes the easiest thing is loving you
Suddenly Im weightless
Feel I could fly or walk on
With my feet never touching the ground
And I know Im not crazy
And now I know Im not sleeping
No the searching is over
And baby Ive found
This is the easiest thing to do
Its the easiest thing to do
Its as simple and as natural as
Breathing out and breathing in
Yes the easiest thing is loving you
Suddenly the sadness is gone
And I dont have to tell myself
To struggle through
To carry on
This is the easiest thing to do
Its the easiest thing to do
Its as simple and as natural as
Breathing out and breathing in
Yes the easiest thing is loving you
Yes the easiest thing is loving you
Yes the easiest thing is loving you
Written by stephanie lewis & rob mathes

song performed by Vanessa Williams
Added by Lucian Velea
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Lynching

Have you ever heard of lynching in the great United States?
'Tis an awful, awful story that the Negro man relates,
How the mobs the laws have trampled, both the human and divine,
In their killing helpless people as their cruel hearts incline.

Not the heathen! 'Tis the Christian with the Bible in his hand,
Stands for pain and death to tyrannize the weaklings of the land;
Not the red man nor the Spaniard kills the blacks of Uncle Sam,
'Tis the white man of the nation who will lunch the sons of Ham.

To a limb upon the highway does a Negro's body hang,
Riddled with a hundred bullets from the bloody, thirsty gang;
Law and order thus defying, and there's none to say them nay.
"Thus," they say, to keep their power, "Negroes must be kept at bay."

How his back is lacerated! how the scene is painted red,
By the blood of one poor Negro till he numbers with the dead!
Listen to the cry of anguish from a soul that God has made,
But it fails to reach the pity of the demons in the raid.

To a tree we find the Negro and to him a chain beside,
There a horse to it is fastened and the whip to him applied.
Thus he pulls the victim's body till it meets a dying fate,
And to history is given a new scandal to relate.

Limb from limb he's torn asunder! See the savage lynchers grin!
Then the flesh is cut in pieces and the souvenirs begin;
Each must have the piece allotted for the friends at home to see,
Relatives will cluster round him, laughing, dancing, filled with glee.

To a stake they bind the Negro, pile the trash around him high,
Make the fire about his body; it is thus that he must die.
Burn him slowly, hear the lynchers: "That's the part we most enjoy!
Tell it out in all the nation how we killed a Negro boy!"

Savage mob a Negro's chasing, and to catch him must not fail;
If it does, another's taken, there to force from him the tale
Where the fleeing man is hiding; if the facts he cannot raise,
Though his innocence protesting, for the same by death he pays.

"'Tis a Negro's blood we're craving; such will have at any cost;
We must lynch the one in keeping, for the other one is lost!"
This they say, and when they're questioned answer like this is the why,
"To the race at large a warning here a Negro man shall die!"

O, how brave the Southern white man when, a hundred men to one,
Lynch a lone, defenceless Negro, when each lyncher has a gun.
If at midnight or the noonday, the result is all the same,
Law is powerless to hinder, and the nation shares the blame.

[...] Read more

poem by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
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Why Washington Retreated

1775

Said Congress to George Washington:
"To set this country free,
You'll have to whip the Britishers
And chase them o'er the sea."
"Oh, very well," said Washington,
"I'll do the best I can.
I'll slam and bang those Britishers
And whip them to a man."

1777

Said Congress to George Washington:
"The people all complain;
Why don't you fight? You but retreat
And then retreat again."
"That can't be helped," said Washington,
"As you will quite agree
When you see how the novelists
Have mixed up things for me."

Said Congress to George Washington:
"Pray make your meaning clear."
Said Washington: "Why, certainly --
But pray excuse this tear.
Of course we know," said Washington,
"The object of this war --
It is to furnish novelists
With patriotic lore."

Said Congress to George Washington:
"Yes! yes! but pray proceed."
Said Washington: "My part in it
Is difficult indeed,
For every hero in the books
Must sometime meet with me,
And every sweet-faced heroine
I must kiss gallantly."

Said Congress to George Washington:
"But why must you retreat?"
Said Washington: "One moment, please,
My story to complete.
These hero-folk are scattered through
The whole United States;
At every little country town
A man or maiden waits."

To Congress said George Washington:

[...] Read more

poem by Ellis Parker Butler
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Tom Zart's 52 Best Of The Rest America At War Poems

SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF WORLD WAR III

The White House
Washington
Tom Zart's Poems

March 16,2007
Ms. Lillian Cauldwell
President and Chief Executive Officer
Passionate Internet Voices Radio
Ann Arbor Michigan

Dear Lillian:
Number 41 passed on the CDs from Tom Zart. Thank you for thinking of me. I am thankful for your efforts to honor our brave military personnel and their families. America owes these courageous men and women a debt of gratitude, and I am honored to be the commander in chief of the greatest force for freedom in the history of the world.
Best Wishes.

Sincerely,

George W. Bush

SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF WORLD WAR III

Our sons and daughters serve in harm's way
To defend our way of life.
Some are students, some grandparents
Many a husband or wife.

They face great odds without complaint
Gambling life and limb for little pay.
So far away from all they love
Fight our soldiers for whom we pray.

The plotters and planners of America's doom
Pledge to murder and maim all they can.
From early childhood they are taught
To kill is to become a man.

They exploit their young as weapons of choice
Teaching in heaven, virgins will await.
Destroying lives along with their own
To learn of their falsehoods too late.

The fearful cry we must submit
And find a way to soothe them.
Where defenders worry if we stand down
The future for America is grim.

[...] Read more

poem by Tom Zart
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Immorality

Have you heard, my friend, the slander that the Negro has to face?
Immorality, the grossest, has been charged up to his race.
Listen, listen to my story, as I now proceed to tell
Of conditions in the Southland, where the mass of Negroes dwell.

Ev'ry city, town or county, ev'ry state on Southern soil,
Has mulattoes in its borders, found among the sons of toil.
Can you tell from whence they landed; or to whither shall they go?
Is the Negro race responsible alone, I'd like to know?

When a man among the Negroes is the least suspected there
Of an intimate relation with a daughter that is fair,
Then an angry mob arises and he answers for the same
In a death, the worst in cruelty the company can name.

Though the noonday sun is shining at the time the lynching's done,
Still the officers of justice can't detect a single one,
Who partook in Negro killing, for the deed no one is blamed,
And inside the nation's senate comes a voice, 'We're not ashamed.'

Is the same true when a white man leads a Negro girl astray?
When he takes away her virtue, is the same true? tell me, pray,
Do the press and pulpit clamor or condemn the mighty wrong?
Is there sentiment against it? is the burden of my song.

When the case is thus presented, they are silent as the grave,
And the law at once is powerless a Negro's name to save,
So you see the same continues and the truth is like a flood,
That in veins of Southern Negroes flow the best of Southern blood.

Can you tell of these mulattoes, did they fall here from the sky?
How is this that they're among us? can you tell the reason why?
Who's to blame for their existence? is the Negro race alone?
If there are such freaks in nature it is time to make them known.

'Tis a custom born of slavery when master's law and might,
Was enforced upon the bondsman without question of the right,
And the parson preached on Sunday how the servant should obey
All the mandates of the master, let them be whate'er they may.

O, how sad the tales of bondage when persuasive measures failed,
How they tortured Negro women till their hellish plans prevailed!
Women faithful to their virtue were as martyrs sent to rest,
Others yielded to the tempter, weary, helpless and distressed.

So the spirit lives at present for the master hand to rule,
Cook or washer, nurse or housemaid passes through this training school,
Lo! the greatest of temptations, men and devils there invent,
And present them to the servants, on their ruin so intent.

[...] Read more

poem by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
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Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau, Saviour of Society

Epigraph

Υδραν φονεύσας, μυρίων τ᾽ ἄλλων πόνων
διῆλθον ἀγέλας . . .
τὸ λοίσθιον δὲ τόνδ᾽ ἔτλην τάλας πόνον,
. . . δῶμα θριγκῶσαι κακοῖς.

I slew the Hydra, and from labour pass'd
To labour — tribes of labours! Till, at last,
Attempting one more labour, in a trice,
Alack, with ills I crowned the edifice.

You have seen better days, dear? So have I —
And worse too, for they brought no such bud-mouth
As yours to lisp "You wish you knew me!" Well,
Wise men, 't is said, have sometimes wished the same,
And wished and had their trouble for their pains.
Suppose my Œdipus should lurk at last
Under a pork-pie hat and crinoline,
And, latish, pounce on Sphynx in Leicester Square?
Or likelier, what if Sphynx in wise old age,
Grown sick of snapping foolish people's heads,
And jealous for her riddle's proper rede, —
Jealous that the good trick which served the turn
Have justice rendered it, nor class one day
With friend Home's stilts and tongs and medium-ware,—
What if the once redoubted Sphynx, I say,
(Because night draws on, and the sands increase,
And desert-whispers grow a prophecy)
Tell all to Corinth of her own accord.
Bright Corinth, not dull Thebes, for Lais' sake,
Who finds me hardly grey, and likes my nose,
And thinks a man of sixty at the prime?
Good! It shall be! Revealment of myself!
But listen, for we must co-operate;
I don't drink tea: permit me the cigar!
First, how to make the matter plain, of course —
What was the law by which I lived. Let 's see:
Ay, we must take one instant of my life
Spent sitting by your side in this neat room:
Watch well the way I use it, and don't laugh!
Here's paper on the table, pen and ink:
Give me the soiled bit — not the pretty rose!
See! having sat an hour, I'm rested now,
Therefore want work: and spy no better work
For eye and hand and mind that guides them both,
During this instant, than to draw my pen
From blot One — thus — up, up to blot Two — thus —
Which I at last reach, thus, and here's my line
Five inches long and tolerably straight:

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning (1871)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Jim Crow Cars

If within the cruel Southland you have chanced to take a ride,
You the Jim Crow cars have noticed, how they crush a Negro's pride,
How he pays a first class passage and a second class receives,
Gets the worst accommodations ev'ry friend of truth believes.

'Tis the rule that all conductors, in the service of the train,
Practice gross discriminations on the Negro—such is plain—
If a drunkard is a white man, at his mercy Negroes are,
Legalized humiliation is the Negro Jim Crow car.

'Tis a license given white men, they may go just where they please,
In the white man's car or Negro's will they move with perfect ease,
If complaint is made by Negroes the conductor will go out
Till the whites are through carousing, then he shows himself about.

They will often raise a riot, butcher up the Negroes there,
Unmolested will they quarrel, use their pistols,rant and swear,
They will smoke among the ladies though offensive the cigar;
'Tis the place to drink their whiskey, in the Negro Jim Crow car.

If a Negro shows resistance to his treatment by a tough,
At some station he's arrested for the same, though not enough,
He is thrashed or lynched or tortured as will please the demon's rage,
Mobbed, of course, by 'unknown parties,' thus is closed the darkened page.

If a lunatic is carried, white or black, it is the same,
Or a criminal is taken to the prison-house in shame,
In the Negro car he's ushered with the sheriff at his side,
Out of deference for white men in their car he scorns to ride.

We despise a Negro's manhood, says the Southland, and expect,
All supremacy for white men—black men's rights we'll not protect,
This the Negro bears with patience for the nation bows to might,
Wrong has borne aloft its colors disregarding what is right.

This is called a Christian nation, but we fail to understand,
How the teachings of the Bible can with such a system band;
Purest love that knows no evil can alone the story tell,
How to banish such abuses, how to treat a neighbor well.

poem by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
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poem by Caasder Fronds
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The Dog

THE key, which opes the chest of hoarded gold.
Unlocks the heart that favours would withhold.
To this the god of love has oft recourse,
When arrows fail to reach the secret source,
And I'll maintain he's right, for, 'mong mankind,
Nice presents ev'ry where we pleasing find;
Kings, princes, potentates, receive the same,
And when a lady thinks she's not to blame,
To do what custom tolerates around;
When Venus' acts are only Themis' found,
I'll nothing 'gainst her say; more faults than one,
Besides the present, have their course begun.

A MANTUAN judge espoused a beauteous fair:
Her name was Argia:--Anselm was her care,
An aged dotard, trembling with alarms,
While she was young, and blessed with seraph charms.
But, not content with such a pleasing prize,
His jealousy appeared without disguise,
Which greater admiration round her drew,
Who doubtless merited, in ev'ry view,
Attention from the first in rank or place
So elegant her form, so fine her face.

'TWOULD endless prove, and nothing would avail,
Each lover's pain minutely to detail:
Their arts and wiles; enough 'twill be no doubt,
To say the lady's heart was found so stout,
She let them sigh their precious hours away,
And scarcely seemed emotion to betray.

WHILE at the judge's, Cupid was employed,
Some weighty things the Mantuan state annoyed,
Of such importance, that the rulers meant,
An embassy should to the Pope be sent.
As Anselm was a judge of high degree,
No one so well embassador could be.

'TWAS with reluctance he agreed to go,
And be at Rome their mighty Plenipo';
The business would be long, and he must dwell
Six months or more abroad, he could not tell.
Though great the honour, he should leave his dove,
Which would be painful to connubial love.
Long embassies and journeys far from home
Oft cuckoldom around induce to roam.

THE husband, full of fears about his wife;
Exclaimed--my ever--darling, precious life,
I must away; adieu, be faithful pray,

[...] Read more

poem by La Fontaine
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The Columbiad: Book VII

The Argument

Coast of France rises in vision. Louis, to humble the British power, forms an alliance with the American states. This brings France, Spain and Holland into the war, and rouses Hyder Ally to attack the English in India. The vision returns to America, where the military operations continue with various success. Battle of Monmouth. Storming of Stonypoint by Wayne. Actions of Lincoln, and surrender of Charleston. Movements of Cornwallis. Actions of Greene, and battle of Eutaw. French army arrives, and joins the American. They march to besiege the English army of Cornwallis in York and Gloster. Naval battle of Degrasse and Graves. Two of their ships grappled and blown up. Progress of the siege. A citadel mined and blown up. Capture of Cornwallis and his army. Their banners furled and muskets piled on the field of battle.

Thus view'd the Pair; when lo, in eastern skies,
From glooms unfolding, Gallia's coasts arise.
Bright o'er the scenes of state a golden throne,
Instarr'd with gems and hung with purple, shone;
Young Bourbon there in royal splendor sat,
And fleets and moving armies round him wait.
For now the contest, with increased alarms,
Fill'd every court and roused the world to arms;
As Hesper's hand, that light from darkness brings,
And good to nations from the scourge of kings,
In this dread hour bade broader beams unfold,
And the new world illuminate the old.

In Europe's realms a school of sages trace
The expanding dawn that waits the Reasoning Race;
On the bright Occident they fix their eyes,
Thro glorious toils where struggling nations rise;
Where each firm deed, each new illustrious name
Calls into light a field of nobler fame:
A field that feeds their hope, confirms the plan
Of well poized freedom and the weal of man.
They scheme, they theorize, expand their scope,
Glance o'er Hesperia to her utmost cope;
Where streams unknown for other oceans stray,
Where suns unseen their waste of beams display,
Where sires of unborn nations claim their birth,
And ask their empires in those wilds of earth.
While round all eastern climes, with painful eye,
In slavery sunk they see the kingdoms lie,
Whole states exhausted to enrich a throne,
Their fruits untasted and their rights unknown;
Thro tears of grief that speak the well taught mind,
They hail the æra that relieves mankind.

Of these the first, the Gallic sages stand,
And urge their king to lift an aiding hand.
The cause of humankind their souls inspired,
Columbia's wrongs their indignation fired;
To share her fateful deeds their counsel moved,
To base in practice what in theme they proved:
That no proud privilege from birth can spring,
No right divine, nor compact form a king;
That in the people dwells the sovereign sway,
Who rule by proxy, by themselves obey;

[...] Read more

poem by Joel Barlow
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Prejudice

How strangely blind is prejudice, the Negro's greatest foe!
It never fails to see the wrong but naught of good can know.
'Tis blind to all that's lofty, yea, to truth it is opposed,
Degrading things will ope his eyes, while good will keep them closed.

How cruel, too, is prejudice! how wicked is the tongue!
The evils reign supremely there, the bad is ever sung;
With some the Negro needs a soul, with others he's a brute,
In silence those remaining live and naught of this dispute.

The schools it legislates against, in keeping Negroes down,
Whatever tends to elevate it meets it with a frown.
It gives to them the Jim Crow car and vessels on the sea;
It makes the stockade to exist and take their liberty.

It makes the press to vacillate up the Negro's name,
The pulpit makes a compromise with evil, for the same,
It makes the Pharaohs of today and seals them with its ban,
It strives to close the door of hope upon the Negro man.

It causes mobs to formulate, to come and go at will,
At morning, evening, noon or night, a Negro man to kill,
It brings injustice to the courts when Negro men are tried,
It wrings the ballot from their hands—a thousand wrongs beside.

It is the country's greatest curse, the nation's open sore,
It slowly saps the precious life, is poison to the core,
Such ravages gave certain death to nations in the past,
The same will lay this country low, its fondest hopes will blast.

It minimizes all that's good and magnifies the ill,
The devil's mission upon earth, it clamors to fulfill;
'Twas prejudice that caused the death of Christ upon the tree,
He knows the pangs that Negroes feel and gives them sympathy.

When men refuse to see the light a darkness is assured,
Such blindness comes upon the scene as never can be cured!
Contagious is the dread disease, for Negroes learn to view
The white man with suspicious eyes, but here's a thing that's new.

The Negro Problem of the land, and all the same entails,
Will be no more whene'er we find a sentiment prevails,
To bury prejudice so deep it never can arise
Till all the races of the earth shall meet above the skies.

Twas God who made the Negro black, the reasons are His own
One blood the nations all the same, the facts are too well known,
He also made the Golden Rule, to use the neighbor well,
Shall prejudice among us dwell forever? who can tell?

poem by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
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The Negro Schools

Please be silent now, my country, while I fill the speaker's place;
While I point out some abuses that we constantly embrace,
Listen with your best attention to the words that I shall say,
How the Negro schools are managed, in this Commonwealth today.

All the officers are white men and together they conspire,
To undo the schools for Negroes, of such deeds they never tire;
Oft we find among the trustees men who cannot read a word,
But when speaking of the Negro, they are certain to be heard.

Education for the Negro they discourage, and they say,
'It will bring dissatisfaction to such people ev'ry day,
Make them crave for something higher, such as white men should enjoy,
Which will spoil the other Negroes that we have in our employ.'

Shorter terms are recommended many times as low as two
Are the months to Negroes given, in a year—now this is true,
Longer terms the whites are given in the same communities—
They conform to such a standard of the right with perfect ease.

Poorer pay to Negro teachers, driving good ones from the field,
Schools are let to lowest bidders to the same they're forced to yield,
Higher pay and better teachers for the white schools is the cry.
While encouragement is given Negro schools to starve and die.

Rural libraries established for the whites on ev'ry side,
But when application's made for Negro schools it is denied,
Thus they deal with education for the mass of Negro youth,
Posing still as great exponents and conservers of the truth.

From the sword of fierce Goliath we may all a lesson learn,
How while planning death to others on your head it may return,
In regard to schools for Negroes, cease their welfare to neglect,
For the same will come upon you in a way you least expect.

poem by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
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VI. Giuseppe Caponsacchi

Answer you, Sirs? Do I understand aright?
Have patience! In this sudden smoke from hell,—
So things disguise themselves,—I cannot see
My own hand held thus broad before my face
And know it again. Answer you? Then that means
Tell over twice what I, the first time, told
Six months ago: 't was here, I do believe,
Fronting you same three in this very room,
I stood and told you: yet now no one laughs,
Who then … nay, dear my lords, but laugh you did,
As good as laugh, what in a judge we style
Laughter—no levity, nothing indecorous, lords!
Only,—I think I apprehend the mood:
There was the blameless shrug, permissible smirk,
The pen's pretence at play with the pursed mouth,
The titter stifled in the hollow palm
Which rubbed the eyebrow and caressed the nose,
When I first told my tale: they meant, you know,
"The sly one, all this we are bound believe!
"Well, he can say no other than what he says.
"We have been young, too,—come, there's greater guilt!
"Let him but decently disembroil himself,
"Scramble from out the scrape nor move the mud,—
"We solid ones may risk a finger-stretch!
And now you sit as grave, stare as aghast
As if I were a phantom: now 't is—"Friend,
"Collect yourself!"—no laughing matter more—
"Counsel the Court in this extremity,
"Tell us again!"—tell that, for telling which,
I got the jocular piece of punishment,
Was sent to lounge a little in the place
Whence now of a sudden here you summon me
To take the intelligence from just—your lips!
You, Judge Tommati, who then tittered most,—
That she I helped eight months since to escape
Her husband, was retaken by the same,
Three days ago, if I have seized your sense,—
(I being disallowed to interfere,
Meddle or make in a matter none of mine,
For you and law were guardians quite enough
O' the innocent, without a pert priest's help)—
And that he has butchered her accordingly,
As she foretold and as myself believed,—
And, so foretelling and believing so,
We were punished, both of us, the merry way:
Therefore, tell once again the tale! For what?
Pompilia is only dying while I speak!
Why does the mirth hang fire and miss the smile?
My masters, there's an old book, you should con
For strange adventures, applicable yet,

[...] Read more

poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Injustice of the Courts

Whites alone upon the jury in a number of the states,
Thus they crush a helpless Negro with their prejudicial hates;
Legal ills they thrust upon him, and the tale is passing sad—
Equal rights with white men? Never! Color-phobia makes them mad.

'Tis the training of the children, every Negro to suppress,
They their spleen may vent upon him and he happy, none the less,
They will boast aloud in anger if by Negroes they are crossed,
'If we shoot or kill a Negro, not a cent will be the cost.'

Juries represent the people and their sentiments make known,
When a Negro comes in question there's discrimination shown.
They are bold to make assertion that they will not do the same
For a Negro as a white man, and no feeling comes of shame.

Jurymen have made confession after trial had been made
Of a Negro, and 'He's guilty!' was the verdict there displayed.
Stern remorse so touched the conscience, they the story did relate,
How the verdict they had rendered was to stay the dying fate.

'It was hard to say him guilty, for the man, we thought, was clear.
But a mob was making clamors that were terrible to hear.'
'Punishment or death!' it shouted, and around began to press;
And of two impending evils, we have chosen him the less.

Thus we legalized the lynchers, we their words to court have brought,
And the innocent convicted! how revolting is the thought!
When a mob has forced a jury to a stand against the right,
All the waters of the ocean cannot make the conscience white.

Once a Negro girl was saucy, and the wife the husband told,
Who in haste arraigned the servant and began to swear and scold.
Then he whipped her without mercy—straightway she to law applied.
Passing strange—they found him guilty, and the judge was sorely tried.
This he said, in making sentence, 'No disfavor comes to you,
You have only done as others, or as I myself would do,
If your servants vex the mistress, thrash them out again, I say,
Go to jail ten minutes only, and a fine of five cents pay!'
If a judge is conscientious, then the people vote him out,
His partiality to white men they must know, beyond a doubt.
No equality for Negroes in the law the world must know,
If he fails to make distinctions, from the bench they'll have him go.
Page 45
This injustice is a cancer, in the nation's breast it lives,
Quietly and unmolested, awful is the death it gives.
It results from color-phobia, which the God of right defies,
Slaves of prejudice, take warning! pause before the nation dies.
All the land is running riot, laws are trampled in the face,
Negroes must be law-abiding; whites alone the laws debase.

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poem by Lizelia Augusta Jenkins Moorer
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Toussaint L’Ouverture

'T WAS night. The tranquil moonlight smile
With which Heaven dreams of Earth, shed down
Its beauty on the Indian isle, —
On broad green field and white-walled town;
And inland waste of rock and wood,
In searching sunshine, wild and rude,
Rose, mellowed through the silver gleam,
Soft as the landscape of a dream.
All motionless and dewy wet,
Tree, vine, and flower in shadow met:
The myrtle with its snowy bloom,
Crossing the nightshade's solemn gloom, —
The white cecropia's silver rind
Relieved by deeper green behind,
The orange with its fruit of gold,
The lithe paullinia's verdant fold,
The passion-flower, with symbol holy,
Twining its tendrils long and lowly,
The rhexias dark, and cassia tall,
And proudly rising over all,
The kingly palm's imperial stem,.
Crowned with its leafy diadem,
Star-like, beneath whose sombre shade,
The fiery-winged cucullo played!
How lovely was thine aspect, then,
Fair island of the Western Sea!
Lavish of beauty, even whe
Thy brutes were happier than thy men,
For they, at least, were free!
Regardless of thy glorious clime,
Unmindful of thy soil of flowers,
The toiling negro sighed, that Time
No faster sped his hours.
For, by the dewy moonlight still,
He fed the weary-turning mill,
Or bent him in the chill morass,
To pluck the long and tangled grass,
And hear above his scar-worn back
The heavy slave-whip's frequent crack:
While in his heart one evil thought
In solitary madness wrought,
One baleful fire surviving still
The quenching of the immortal mind,
One sterner passion of his kind,
Which even fetters could not kill,
The savage hope, to deal, erelong,
A vengeance bitterer than his wrong!
Hark to that cry! long, loud, and shrill,
From field and forest, rock and hill,
Thrilling and horrible it rang,

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poem by John Greenleaf Whittier
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The Presidency & General Washington = 2012

THE PRESIDENCY & GENERAL WASHINGTON = 2012

Those who wish to be President
Must practice what they teach.
For their people need inspiring
To believe what they preach.

Take heed therefore, unto yourselves
You overseers of the flock
Or the voters shall cast you out
For your futures are not of rock.

Life may place you in deep waters
Though it doesn't wish you to drown.
It's your past record that lets us know
Who you are as you smile or frown.

If you wish to be remembered
From the truth you must never part.
Power corrupts the best of us
When we stop listening to our heart.

GENERAL WASHINGTON

Once in command, he boxed in the British
At Boston where he captured Dorchester Heights
Overlooking the Brits at his mercy
As his men took aim with their cannon sites.

The British commander had but one choice
To sail to New York to renew the fight.
Where the English had much greater forces
Who soon chased Washington's men in full flight.

They continued on to Pennsylvania
After crossing the Hudson in retreat
With the British forces in hot pursuit
It looked as though George was doomed to defeat.

When winter seemed to have stopped the fighting
That's when Washington crossed the Delaware.
On Christmas night he captured Trenton
Where Hessians were surprised and unaware.

He whipped the British at Princeton
Where in victory his men began to sing.
Washington then wintered at Morristown
Training his troops for the combat of spring.

Washington fought bravely at Brandywine

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poem by Tom Zart
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Canto the Fifth

I
When amatory poets sing their loves
In liquid lines mellifluously bland,
And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves,
They little think what mischief is in hand;
The greater their success the worse it proves,
As Ovid's verse may give to understand;
Even Petrarch's self, if judged with due severity,
Is the Platonic pimp of all posterity.

II
I therefore do denounce all amorous writing,
Except in such a way as not to attract;
Plain -- simple -- short, and by no means inviting,
But with a moral to each error tack'd,
Form'd rather for instructing than delighting,
And with all passions in their turn attack'd;
Now, if my Pegasus should not be shod ill,
This poem will become a moral model.

III
The European with the Asian shore
Sprinkled with palaces; the ocean stream
Here and there studded with a seventy-four;
Sophia's cupola with golden gleam;
The cypress groves; Olympus high and hoar;
The twelve isles, and the more than I could dream,
Far less describe, present the very view
Which charm'd the charming Mary Montagu.

IV
I have a passion for the name of "Mary,"
For once it was a magic sound to me;
And still it half calls up the realms of fairy,
Where I beheld what never was to be;
All feelings changed, but this was last to vary,
A spell from which even yet I am not quite free:
But I grow sad -- and let a tale grow cold,
Which must not be pathetically told.

V
The wind swept down the Euxine, and the wave
Broke foaming o'er the blue Symplegades;
'T is a grand sight from off the Giant's Grave
To watch the progress of those rolling seas
Between the Bosphorus, as they lash and lave
Europe and Asia, you being quite at ease;
There's not a sea the passenger e'er pukes in,
Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.

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poem by Byron from Don Juan (1824)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Don Juan: Canto The Fifth

When amatory poets sing their loves
In liquid lines mellifluously bland,
And pair their rhymes as Venus yokes her doves,
They little think what mischief is in hand;
The greater their success the worse it proves,
As Ovid's verse may give to understand;
Even Petrarch's self, if judged with due severity,
Is the Platonic pimp of all posterity.

I therefore do denounce all amorous writing,
Except in such a way as not to attract;
Plain- simple- short, and by no means inviting,
But with a moral to each error tack'd,
Form'd rather for instructing than delighting,
And with all passions in their turn attack'd;
Now, if my Pegasus should not be shod ill,
This poem will become a moral model.

The European with the Asian shore
Sprinkled with palaces; the ocean stream
Here and there studded with a seventy-four;
Sophia's cupola with golden gleam;
The cypress groves; Olympus high and hoar;
The twelve isles, and the more than I could dream,
Far less describe, present the very view
Which charm'd the charming Mary Montagu.

I have a passion for the name of 'Mary,'
For once it was a magic sound to me;
And still it half calls up the realms of fairy,
Where I beheld what never was to be;
All feelings changed, but this was last to vary,
A spell from which even yet I am not quite free:
But I grow sad- and let a tale grow cold,
Which must not be pathetically told.

The wind swept down the Euxine, and the wave
Broke foaming o'er the blue Symplegades;
'T is a grand sight from off 'the Giant's Grave
To watch the progress of those rolling seas
Between the Bosphorus, as they lash and lave
Europe and Asia, you being quite at ease;
There 's not a sea the passenger e'er pukes in,
Turns up more dangerous breakers than the Euxine.

'T was a raw day of Autumn's bleak beginning,
When nights are equal, but not so the days;
The Parcae then cut short the further spinning
Of seamen's fates, and the loud tempests raise
The waters, and repentance for past sinning

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poem by Byron
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XI. Guido

You are the Cardinal Acciaiuoli, and you,
Abate Panciatichi—two good Tuscan names:
Acciaiuoli—ah, your ancestor it was
Built the huge battlemented convent-block
Over the little forky flashing Greve
That takes the quick turn at the foot o' the hill
Just as one first sees Florence: oh those days!
'T is Ema, though, the other rivulet,
The one-arched brown brick bridge yawns over,—yes,
Gallop and go five minutes, and you gain
The Roman Gate from where the Ema's bridged:
Kingfishers fly there: how I see the bend
O'erturreted by Certosa which he built,
That Senescal (we styled him) of your House!
I do adjure you, help me, Sirs! My blood
Comes from as far a source: ought it to end
This way, by leakage through their scaffold-planks
Into Rome's sink where her red refuse runs?
Sirs, I beseech you by blood-sympathy,
If there be any vile experiment
In the air,—if this your visit simply prove,
When all's done, just a well-intentioned trick,
That tries for truth truer than truth itself,
By startling up a man, ere break of day,
To tell him he must die at sunset,—pshaw!
That man's a Franceschini; feel his pulse,
Laugh at your folly, and let's all go sleep!
You have my last word,—innocent am I
As Innocent my Pope and murderer,
Innocent as a babe, as Mary's own,
As Mary's self,—I said, say and repeat,—
And why, then, should I die twelve hours hence? I—
Whom, not twelve hours ago, the gaoler bade
Turn to my straw-truss, settle and sleep sound
That I might wake the sooner, promptlier pay
His due of meat-and-drink-indulgence, cross
His palm with fee of the good-hand, beside,
As gallants use who go at large again!
For why? All honest Rome approved my part;
Whoever owned wife, sister, daughter,—nay,
Mistress,—had any shadow of any right
That looks like right, and, all the more resolved,
Held it with tooth and nail,—these manly men
Approved! I being for Rome, Rome was for me.
Then, there's the point reserved, the subterfuge
My lawyers held by, kept for last resource,
Firm should all else,—the impossible fancy!—fail,
And sneaking burgess-spirit win the day.
The knaves! One plea at least would hold,—they laughed,—
One grappling-iron scratch the bottom-rock

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poem by Robert Browning from The Ring and the Book
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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