’T was morn, and yet it was not morn;
’T was morn in heaven, not on earth,—
A star was singing of a birth,
Just saying that a day was born.
The marsh hard by that bound the lake,—
The great low sea-lake, Ponchartrain,
Shut off from sultry Cuban main,—
Drew up its legs, as half awake:
Drew long stork legs, long legs that steep
In slime where alligators creep,—
Drew long green legs that stir the grass,
As when the late lorn night-winds pass.
Then from the marsh came croakings low,
Then louder croaked some sea-marsh beast;
Then, far away against the east,
God’s rose of morn began to grow.
From out the marsh, against that east,
A ghostly moss-swept cypress stood;
With ragged arms above the wood
It rose, a God-forsaken beast.
It seemed so frightened where it rose!
The moss-hung thing it seemed to wave
The worn-out garments of the grave,—
To wave and wave its old grave-clothes.
Close by, a cow rose up and lowed
From out a palm-thatched milking-shed.
A black boy on the river road
Fled sudden, as the night had fled:
A nude black boy, a bit of night
That had been broken off and lost
From flying night, the time it crossed
The surging river in its flight:
A bit of darkness, following
The sable night on sable wing,—
A bit of darkness stilled with fear,
Because that nameless tomb was near.
Then holy bells came pealing out;
Then steamboats blew, then horses neighed;
Then smoke from hamlets round about
Crept out, as if no more afraid.