Classic and Contemporary Poetry
AFRICA, by CINCINNATUS HEINE MILLER Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: Oh! She is very old. I lay Last Line: "old sphinx, behold, we cannot read!" Alternate Author Name(s): Miller, Joaquin Subject(s): Africa | ||||||||
Oh! she is very old. I lay, Made dumb with awe and wonderment, Beneath a palm before my tent, With idle and discouraged hands, Not many days ago, on sands Of awful, silent Africa. Long gazing on her ghostly shades, That lift their bare arms in the air, I lay. I mused where story fades From her dark brow and found her fair. A slave, and old, within her veins There runs that warm, forbidden blood That no man dares to dignify In elevated song. The chains That held her race but yesterday Hold still the hands of men. Forbid Is Ethiop. The turbid flood Of prejudice lies stagnant still, And all the world is tainted. Will And wit lie broken as a lance Against the brazen mailed face Of old opinion. None advance, Steel-clad and glad, to the attack, With trumpet and with song. Look back! Beneath yon pyramids lie hid The histories of her great race. . . . Old Nilus rolls right sullen by, With all his secrets. Who shall say: My father rear'd a pyramid; My brother clipp'd the dragon's wings; My mother was Semiramis? Yea, harps strike idly out of place; Men sing of savage Saxon kings New-born and known but yesterday, And Norman blood presumes to say. . . Nay, ye who boast ancestral name And vaunt deeds dignified by time Must not despise her. Who hath worn Since time began a face that is So all-enduring, old like this -- A face like Africa's? Behold! The Sphinx is Africa. The bond Of silence is upon her. Old And white with tombs, and rent and shorn; With raiment wet with tears, and torn, And trampled on, yet all untamed; All naked now, yet not ashamed, -- The mistress of the young world's prime, Whose obelisks still laugh at time, And lift to heaven her fair name, Sleeps satisfied upon her fame. Beyond the Sphinx, and still beyond, Beyond the tawny desert-tomb Of Time; beyond tradition, loom And lift, ghost-like, from out the gloom, Her thousand cities, battle-torn And gray with story and with Time. Her humblest ruins are sublime; Her thrones with mosses overborne Make velvets for the feet of Time. She points a hand and cries: "Go read The letter'd obelisks that lord Old Rome, and know my name and deed. My archives these, and plunder'd when I had grown weary of all men." We turn to these; we cry: "Abhorr'd Old Sphinx, behold, we cannot read!" | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...AFRICA PAESE NOTTURNO by KENNETH KOCH OTTFFSSENTE by KENNETH REXROTH AFRICA REVISITED by ROBERT DUNCAN THE QUEST FOR THE SOURCE OF THE NILE by ALBERT GOLDBARTH A CALIFORNIA CHRISTMAS by CINCINNATUS HEINE MILLER |
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