A noiseless patient spider,
I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,
Ever unreeling down, ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaseless musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,
Till the bridge you will need be form’d,. till the ductile anchor hold,
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul!

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh! My soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav’d of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree
And sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed 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 noon day.

And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
And these black body and this sun burnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

For when our souls have learnt the heat to bear
The clouds will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: Come out from the grove my love and care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice

Thus did my mother say and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:

I’ll shade him from the heat ‘til he can bear,
To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee.
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me.