My mother bore me in the southern wild,

And I am black, but O my soul is white!

White as an angel is the English child,

But I am black, as if bereaved of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree,

And, sitting down before the heat of day,

She took me on her lap and kissèd me,

And, pointing to the East, began to say:

‘Look on the rising sun: there God does live,

And gives His light, and gives His heat away,

And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive

Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.

‘And we are put on earth a little space,

That we may learn to bear the beams of love;

And these black bodies and this sunburnt face

Are but a cloud, and like a shady grove.