He lives within the hollow wood,
From one clear dell he seldom ranges;
His daily toil in solitude
Revolves, but never changes.

A still old man, with grizzled beard,
Gray eye, bent shape, and smoke-tanned features,
His quiet footstep is not feared
By shyest woodland creatures.

I love to watch the pale blue spire
His scented labour builds above it;
I track the woodland by his fire,
And, seen afar, I love it.

It seems among the serious trees
The emblem of a living pleasure,
It animates the silences
As with a tuneful measure.

And dream not that such humdrum ways
Fold naught of Nature's charm around him;
The mystery of soundless days
Hath sought for him and found him.

He hides within his simple brain
An instinct innocent and holy,
The music of a wood-bird's strain, —
Not blithe, nor melancholy,

But hung upon the calm content
Of wholesome leaf and bough and blossom —
An unecstatic ravishment
Born in a rustic bosom.

He knows the moods of forest things,
He holds, in his own speechless fashion,
For helpless forms of fur and wings
A mild paternal passion.

Within his horny hand he holds
The warm brood of the ruddy squirrel;
Their bushy mother storms and scolds,
But knows no sense of peril.

The dormouse shares his crumb of cheese,
His homeward trudge the rabbits follow;
He finds, in angles of the trees,
The cup nest of the swallow.

And through this sympathy, perchance,
The beating heart of life he reaches
Far more than we who idly dance
An hour beneath the beeches.

Our science and our empty pride,
Our busy dream of introspection,
To God seem vain and poor beside
This dumb, sincere reflection.

Yet he will die unsought, unknown,
A nameless headstone stand above him,
And the vast woodland, vague and lone,
Be all that's left to love him.

America, ungrateful land!
Whose treacherous soil my blood has dyed,
Whose wealth my father's shackled hand
Has hoarded up, who has denied

Me right to live, to vote, to learn,
Whose laws protect me not from wrong,
Who will permit me not to earn
An honest living, who in song

Doth boast a land of freedom, but
Whose flag waves o'er a land of crime,
The makers of whose laws unjust
Themselves are stained with blood and slime

Of murders, lynchings, rape and lies,
And who, while yet the sacred oath
Of office on their vile lips lies,
Will lead a mob of comrades forth

To take some negro, innocent,
Accused perhaps, but never tried,
From custody of government
And burn him, to a pillar tied,

I fear the dawning of thy doom:
I hear the voice of justice cry
From out this wilderness of gloom:
I see the dark clouds in thy sky.

From Boston massacre, my blood
Through all the channels of thy war
Has mingled with thy crimson flood;
Through Yorktown, Erie, Wagner,—far

To El Caney and San Juan Hill,
Where, midst the charges awful din,
With song our voice the air did fill
And make that song a battle hymn .—

The Philippines, so dearly bought,
Are strewn with bodies of my kin;
My comrades have thy glory wrought
In war, in peace, with skill and vim.

'Twas I who rescued from the urn
Of death thy fickle soldier chief;
Tis he who gives me in return
Disgrace, dishonor, no relief

From poverty my feeble years
Must bring me soon; he who deprives
Me of support retirement rears
Up for her faithful soldiers' lives.

My thirty years of living death
In bloody war avail me naught
When prejudice and perjured breath
Of Brownsville 'gainst my name is brought.

And dost thou yet, ungrateful land
Expect my blood and kin to stand
In cowered silence, while thy hand
Continues to despoil our band?

May God forbid that of my race
A single child shall e'er disgrace
His native land, the resting place
Of martyred kin, by fear to face

Injustice by whomever thrown.
The ancient Plebeians of Rome
For treatment such renounced their home
And sought the Sacred Mountain's dome.

The colonies of George the Third
To less injustice war preferred
And fired,—the while the world concurred,—
The shot which round the earth was heard.

Republic cannot long endure
When autocrat can feel secure
To heap injustice on the poor
Or helpless; ruin follows sure.

Three centuries have near rolled by
Since first our fathers' mournful cry
And clank of chains rose to thy sky,
Nor yet have found just cause to die.

Our voice of protest shall not cease
Until thy unjust bonds release
Our rights, that our lives may increase
In riches, happiness and peace.

But I, alas! have given all
In answer to thy urgent call,
Exposed my life to sword and ball,
And now, as o'er me creeps the fall

Of life, I find no recompense
But base discharge, with no defense
Through which to prove my innocence,
Though I've committed no offense.

For this I've given up my home
O'er hapless battle-fields to roam,
I've crossed the ocean's hungry foam,
I've fought disease in hostile loam.

O God of justice and of right!
If thou art deaf and hast no sight,
Lend me Thy weapons and Thy might,
That this last battle I may fight.