e typical:

But _we_ who are dark, we are dark
Ah God, we have no stars!
About our souls in care and cark
Our blackness shuts like prison-bars;
The poor souls crouch so far behind
That never a comfort can they find
By reaching through the prison-bars.

* * * * *

Why, in that single glance I had
Of my child's face, ... I tell you all,
I saw a look that made me mad
The _master's_ look, that used to fall
On my soul like his lash ... or worse
And so, to save it from my curse,
I twisted it round in my shawl.

* * * * *

From the white man's house, and the black man's hut,
I carried the little body on;
The forest's arm did round us shut,
And silence through the trees did run:
They asked no question as I went,
They stood too high for astonishment,
They could see God sit on his throne.

* * * * *

(Man, drop that stone you dared to lift!--)
I wish you who stand there five abreast,
Each, for his own wife's joy and gift,
A little corpse as safely at rest
As mine in the mangoes: Yes, but _she_
My keep live babies on her knee,
And sing the song she likes the best.

In such a review as this of the connections between Mrs. Browning and
the Negro one can not help coming face to face with the question
whether her famous husband was not himself connected by blood with the
Negro race. The strain is hardly so pronounced as in men like
Alexandre Dumas or Leigh Hunt, and as in the case of Alexander
Hamilton, the point still seems to be waiting for final proof. The
assertion is persistent, however, and there can be little doubt that
such is the case. The standard life of Browning,[15] after wrestling
in vain with the problem, dismisses it as follows:

Dr. Furnivall has originated a theory, and maintains it as a
conviction, that Mr. Browning's grandmother was more than a
Creole in the strict sense of the term, that of a person born of
white parents in the West Indies, and that an unmistakable dash
of dark blood passed from her to her son and grandson. Such an
occurrence was, on the face of it, not impossible, and would be
absolutely unimportant to my mind, and, I think I may add, to
that of Mr. Browning's sister and son. The poet and his father
were wh