“you are saved: what has cast such a shadow upon you?” “The negro.”

all is owing to Providence

Most negroes are natural valets and hair-dressers

dare say, Spaniards in the main are as good folks as any in Duxbury, Massachusett

the tyranny in Don Benito’s treatment of Atufal, the black

But they were too stupid. Besides, who ever heard of a white so far a renegade as to apostatize from his very species almost, by leaguing in against it with negroes

they seemed at once tender of heart and tough of constitution; equally ready to die for their infants or fight for them.

His attention had been drawn to a slumbering negress,

Don Benito’s confessed ill opinion of his crew

but poor Babo here, in his own land, was only a poor slave; a black man’s slave was Babo, who now is the white’s.”

like a brave prisoner

shepherds to your flock of black sheep?”

“Pretty serious sport, truly,

South Americans of his class. Though on the present voyage sailing from Buenos Ayres, he had avowed himself a native and resident of Chili,

“Don Benito, I envy you such a friend; slave I cannot call him.”

Oh, my God!

biting his lip, biting his finger-nail, flushing, paling, twitching his beard

American

unsophisticated Africans.

Manilla

more especially the Spaniard

Whether the ship had a figure-head

carrying negro slaves, amongst other valuable freight

white-washed monastery

I exist as I am, that is enough,

I swear I will never again mention love or death inside a house,

Sit a while dear son, Here are biscuits to eat and here is milk to drink, But as soon as you sleep and renew yourself in sweet clothes, I kiss you with a good-by kiss and open the gate for your egress hence.

I do not despise you priests, all time, the world over, My faith is the greatest of faiths and the least of faiths, Enclosing worship ancient and modern and all between ancient and modern, Believing I shall come again upon the earth after five thousand years, Waiting responses from oracles, honoring the gods, saluting the sun, Making a fetich of the first rock or stump, powowing with sticks in the circle of obis, Helping the llama or brahmin as he trims the lamps of the idols, Dancing yet through the streets in a phallic procession, rapt and austere in the woods a gymnosophist, Drinking mead from the skull-cup, to Shastas and Vedas admirant, minding the Koran,

bestowing them freely on each man and woman

I am the hounded slave, I wince at the bite of the dogs, Hell and despair are upon me, crack and again crack the marksmen,

I exist as I am, that is enough,

I hear all sounds running together, combined, fused or following, Sounds of the city and sounds out of the city, sounds of the day and night, Talkative young ones to those that like them, the loud laugh of work-people at their meals, The angry base of disjointed friendship, the faint tones of the sick, The judge with hands tight to the desk, his pallid lips pronouncing a death-sentence, The heave’e’yo of stevedores unlading ships by the wharves, the refrain of the anchor-lifters, The ring of alarm-bells, the cry of fire, the whirr of swift-streaking engines and hose-carts with premonitory tinkles and color’d lights, The steam-whistle, the solid roll of the train of approaching cars,

What is a man anyhow? what am I? what are you?

The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited

And of these one and all I weave the song of myself

The sharp-hoof’d moose of the north, the cat on the housesill, the chickadee, the prairie-dog, The litter of the grunting sow as they tug at her teats

I believe in those wing’d purposes,

Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore, Twenty-eight young men and all so friendly; Twenty-eight years of womanly life and all so lonesome.

He staid with me a week before he was recuperated and pass’d north, I had him sit next me at table

Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets hanging from their shoulders, On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck

The suicide sprawls on the bloody floor of the bedroom,

all just as immortal and fathomless as myself, (They do not know how immortal, but I know.)

dead young men and women,

Growing among black folks as among white, Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them the same, I receive them the same.

The sickness of one of my folks or of myself, or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,

I am satisfied

Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs, The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn, The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind,

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,

the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread himself.

Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare

Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide

Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbour, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you.

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations

But now we are a mob

‘I think,’ ‘I am,’

A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me

I suppose no man can violate his nature

It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory

Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere.

but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

There is the man and his virtues.

truth is handsomer than the affectation of love

though the wide universe is full of goo

private heart is true for all men, — that is genius

“Man is his own star;

I have seen the extreme vanity of this world

And the Lord thy God will put all these curses upon thine enemies, and on them which hate thee, which persecuted thee

for thy Work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord

I was not before so much hemmed in with the merciless and cruel heathen, but now as much with pitiful, tender-hearted and compassionate Christians

Lord answered my poor desire

strangely did the Lord provide for them; that I did not see (all the time I was among them) one man, woman, or child, die with hunger.

I cannot but remember how the Indians derided the slowness,

I told them, they had as good knock me in head as starve me to death.

where they were boiling corn and beans, which was a lovely sight to see, but I could not get a taste thereof.

We took up our packs and along we went, but a wearisome day I had of it.

Whereupon I asked one of them, whether they intended to kill him; he answered me, they would not

Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.

Then also I took my Bible to read, but I found no comfort here neither

thought of the English army, and hoped for their coming, and being taken by them, but that failed. I hoped to be carried to Albany, as the Indians had discoursed before, but that failed also

Have pity upon me, O ye my Friends, for the Hand of the Lord has touched me

fortnight

Instead of going toward the Bay, which was that I desired

I went with a good load at my back (for they when they went, though but a little way, would carry all their trumpery with them)

Be still, and know that I am God”

But the thoughts of my going homeward (for so we bent our course) much cheered my spirit, and made my burden seem light

Then I went to see King Philip

the Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away,

If we had been God would have found out a way for the English to have passed this river

In this travel, because of my wound, I was somewhat favored in my load

One of the Indians that came from Medfield fight, had brought some plunder, came to me, and asked me, if I would have a Bible, he had got one in his basket

my sweet babe like a lamb

I then remembered how careless I had been of God’s holy time; how many Sabbaths I had lost and misspent

Oh the number of pagans (now merciless enemies)

One of the Indians carried my poor wounded babe upon a horse; it went moaning all along, “I shall die, I shall die.”

yelling of those black creatures in the night, which made the place a lively resemblance of hell

Now away we must go with those barbarous creatures, with our bodies wounded and bleeding, and our hearts no less than our bodies

as we make our voices heard in a public context.

even weave some comedy and sass in there

“America” can mean the United States and all that comes with being a resident in such a nation, but it is also the entirety of two continents and wherever their influence spreads

merican literature and contemporary culture (such as films and other references)

he voices of old white men talking about even older white men.

Who determines what counts as American literature?

They held a joint council and determined to make their victims dream of snakes twining about them in slimy folds and blowing their fetid breath in their faces, or to make them dream of eating raw or decaying fish, so that they would lose appetite, sicken, and die. Thus it is that snake and fish dreams are accounted for.

but as it is the hunter does not even ask the bear’s pardon when he kills one.

After each in turn had made complaint against the way in which man killed their friends, devoured their flesh and used their skins for his own adornment,

man invented bows, knives, blowguns, spears, and hooks, and began to slaughter the larger animals, birds and fishes for the sake of their flesh or their skins, while the smaller creatures, such as the frogs and worms, were crushed and trodden upon without mercy,