T. Thomas Fortune, "Love's Dominating Power" (1902)
Of love, howe'er he may rebel,
Pursues no more th' exciting chase,
Nor courts war's unforbidding face,
Nor lingers by the rambling stream
Or slumbrous lake's unruffled dream;
But spends his hours the woods among,
Stolid, by soft desires unstrung:
And all his fancies colored are
By rays of Love's resplendent star;
And hushed the war songs he had sung
With savage glee the woods among,—-
A god or devil in the shade
Primeval by his passion made.
His dusky choice becomes a queen,
Present to him in every scene,
Eclipsing all the female kind
In form and face and gifts of mind.
With eyes in which he clearly reads
Th' inspiration of heroic deeds.
His narrow world grows narrower still
While yielding to her gentle will;
Yet he is happier, manlier far,
Than when the chase or barbarous war
Called him o'er winding dale and hill
His mission in the world to fill.
Suppose he wins the woman's love;
Ensnares as he would a dove,
And sinks into a brute again,
A crafty, haughty, savage, vain,—-
Love made him for a fleeting hour
As Juliet was in Romeo's power.
So lords and princelings of the earth,
To luxury born and ease and mirth,
At some stage, barter everything
That to one woman they may cling;
And, not unlike the savage, they
Too often put the wife away,
Or torture her with taunts and jeers
And base neglect, till woe and tears
Drive her to madness or divorce,—
There's not much choice in either course:
The savage chief and brutal lord
Are neither bound by oath nor word.
The faithful record plainly shows
That each one gives, but takes no blows,
Because the victim is too weak
Upon the brute revenge to seek;
The object gained, the longings cease,
Too oft, for man is hard to please,
And surplus love, from friendship grown,
Returns to friendship as its own,
Or hate or desperate, bloody, crimes,
That shock the Purists of the times.
But love, true love! The beggar blind,—
Groping and brooding, sick of mind;
Sees through the mists of vanished time.
Her who had made his youth sublime,
Nerved him to work, in joy and pain,
Conscious he labored not in vain!--
The blackness of his sightless night
Was bright with love's all conquering light;
A woman's tender voice and care
Were with him always, everywhere;
And though her spirit since has fled,
With him she lived? She was not dead!
Go tell it to the moaning seas,—-
Go tell it to the sighing trees,
Go tell it to the whistling winds,
Go tell it to the lords and hinds,
That love is life and life is love
And rules in earth, and heaven above.
Published in Colored American Magazine, July 1902