When I come down to sleep death’s endless night, The threshold of the unknown dark to cross, What to me then will be the keenest loss, When this bright world blurs on my fading sight? Will it be that no more I shall see the trees Or smell the flowers or hear the singing birds Or watch the flashing streams or patient herds? No, I am sure it will be none of these. But, ah! Manhattan’s sights and sounds, her smells, Her crowds, her throbbing force, the thrill that comes From being of her a part, her subtile spells, Her shining towers, her avenues, her slums-- O God! the stark, unutterable pity, To be dead, and never again behold my city! WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT DU BOIS I was born in Massachusetts and educated in her schools, at Fisk University, at Harvard and Berlin. My first published writings were news notes in _The New York Age_. Then I had an article in _The Atlantic Monthly_, and in 1896 my doctor’s thesis on the slave trade was published as my first book. _The Souls of Black Folk_ appeared in 1903 and one or two other books thereafter. I taught at Wilberforce, Pennsylvania and Atlanta and became editor of _The Crisis_ in 1910. A LITANY OF ATLANTA[9] Done at Atlanta, in the Day of Death, 1906. O Silent God, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears an-hungered in these fearful days-- _Hear us, good Lord!_ Listen to us, Thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a mockery in Thy sanctuary. With uplifted hands we front Thy heaven, O God crying: _We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_ We are not better than our fellows, Lord, we are but weak and human men. When our devils do deviltry, curse Thou the doer and the deed: curse them as we curse them, do to them all and more than ever they have done to innocence and weakness, to womanhood and home. _Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!_ And yet whose is the deeper guilt? Who made these devils? Who nursed them in crime and fed them on injustice? Who ravished and debauched their mothers and their grandmothers? Who bought and sold their crime, and waxed fat and rich on public iniquity? _Thou knowest, good God!_ Is this Thy Justice, O Father, that guile be easier than innocence, and the innocent crucified for the guilt of the untouched guilty? _Justice, O Judge of men!_ Wherefore do we pray? Is not the God of the fathers dead? Have not seers seen in Heaven’s halls Thine hearsed and lifeless form stark amidst the black and rolling smoke of sin, where all along bow bitter forms of endless dead? _Awake, Thou that sleepest!_ Thou art not dead, but flown afar, up hills of endless light, thru blazing corridors of suns, where worlds do swing of good and gentle men, of women strong and free--far from the cozenage, black hypocrisy and chaste prostitution of this shameful speck of dust! _Turn again, O Lord, leave us not to perish in our sin!_ From lust of body and lust of blood _Great God, deliver us!_