we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass
The author here use metaphor that compares half destroyed instruments to female, it means females have gotten a lot damages and hurt in human soceity, but actually females used to be the leader of the soceity. Now, females are like fouled compass and water eaten log.
the plangent harps of the Babylonian bondage, as the white cowries clustered like manacles on the drowned women,
I think that the author here uses metaphor to compare the white cowries as white people and drowned women as the poor slave to describe an image that a group of people enslave another group of people inhumanely. I think here the author might ues metonymy rhetorical figure also on this image to refer to slavery time in America.
As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind —
I think the author here means that it is very easy and simply to teach children in this "circuit lies" that only display part of the truth so that it can mislead and control the mind of children, but ,as time passby, the full truth must emerge to sight of children gradually ,and it will strike the original view like dazzel. In face, it always happens throughout most childhood of people, thats why parent family education affects children growing a lot. They learn the part of truth from their parent mostly.
And asks a Vane, the way — Much Gesture, from the Pulpit — Strong Hallelujahs roll —
I guess that Dickinson means asking a way by a vane, it just likes a gesture from a pulpit, many people call Hallelujahs strongly to response to Pulpit, but it actully seems to a vane that gives a gesture with no sense but wind.
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus Is baited by the fickle fruit, declare If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Cullen compares black people suffering like Tantalus and Sisphus to display how suffered they are. They struggle up a never-ending stair as punished, black people work as hard labor too.
So will my page be colored that I write? Being me, it will not be white.
Hughes thinks the page he writes is labeled colored under discrimination by his instructor, his page is not white due to his color. However, everything is actually same for all colors people, the differences come from personal bias. Hughes believes he gets English B for his color.