Before it grows dark,
And before your feet stumble—
On the mountains of dusk.
While ye look for light, He turns it to gloom
And sets it thick darkness.[82]
There this poem leaves the Doom, but in others Jeremiah leaps in a moment from the vague and far-looming to the near and exact. He follows a line which songs of vengeance or deliverance often take among unsophisticated peoples in touch with nature. They will paint you a coming judgment first in the figure of a lowering cloud or bursting storm and then in the twinkling of an eye they turn the clouds or the lightnings into the ranks and flashing arms of invaders arrived. I remember an instance of this within one verse of a negro song from the time of the American Civil War:—
Don't you see de lightning flashing in de cane-brakes?
Don't you think we'se gwine to have a storm?
No you is mistaken—dem's de darkies' bayonets,
And de buttons on de uniform!