Produced by Suzanne Shell, Audrey Longhurst, and the PG Online Distributed Proofreading Team. DARKWATER Voices from within the Veil W.E.B. DU BOIS Originally published in 1920 by Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York. AD NINAM May 12, 1896 POSTSCRIPT These are the things of which men think, who live: of their own selves and the dwelling place of their fathers; of their neighbors; of work and service; of rule and reason and women and children; of Beauty and Death and War. To this thinking I have only to add a point of view: I have been in the world, but not of it. I have seen the human drama from a veiled corner, where all the outer tragedy and comedy have reproduced themselves in microcosm within. From this inner torment of souls the human scene without has interpreted itself to me in unusual and even illuminating ways. For this reason, and this alone, I venture to write again on themes on which great souls have already said greater words, in the hope that I may strike here and there a half-tone, newer even if slighter, up from the heart of my problem and the problems of my people. Between the sterner flights of logic, I have sought to set some little alightings of what may be poetry. They are tributes to Beauty, unworthy to stand alone; yet perversely, in my mind, now at the end, I know not whether I mean the Thought for the Fancy--or the Fancy for the Thought, or why the book trails off to playing, rather than standing strong on unanswering fact. But this is alway--is it not?--the Riddle of Life. Many of my words appear here transformed from other publications and I thank the _Atlantic_, the _Independent_, the _Crisis_, and the _Journal of Race Development_ for letting me use them again. W.E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS. New York, 1919. Contents CHAPTER PAGE POSTSCRIPT ix _Credo_ 1 I. THE SHADOW OF YEARS 3 _A Litany at Atlanta_ 14 II. THE SOULS OF WHITE FOLK 17 _The Riddle of the Sphinx_ 30 III. THE HANDS OF ETHIOPIA 32 _The Princess of the Hither Isles_ 43 IV. OF WORK AND WEALTH 47 _The Second Coming_ 60 V. "THE SERVANT IN THE HOUSE" 63 _Jesus Christ in Texas_ 70 VI. OF THE RULING OF MEN 78 _The Call_ 93 VII. THE DAMNATION OF WOMEN 95 _Children of the Moon_ 109 VIII. THE IMMORTAL CHILD 114 _Almighty Death_ 128 IX. OF BEAUTY AND DEATH 130 _The Prayers of God_ 145 X. THE COMET 149 _A Hymn to the Peoples_ 161 _Credo_