The patient ox that bended low His neck, and drew slow up and down Thy thousand freights through rock-built town Is now the free-born buffalo. No longer of the timid fold, The mountain sheep leaps free and bold His high-built summit and looks down From battlements of buried town. Thine ancient steeds know not the rein; They lord the land; they come, they go At will; they laugh at man; they blow A cloud of black steeds o'er the plain. Thy monuments lie buried now, The ashes whiten on thy brow, The winds, the waves, have drawn away, The very wild man dreads to stay. O! thou art very old. I lay, Made dumb with awe and wonderment, Beneath a palm before my tent, With idle and discouraged hands, Not many days agone, on sands Of awful, silent Africa. Long gazing on her mighty shades, I did recall a semblance there Of thee. I mused where story fades From her dark brow and found her fair. A slave, and old, within her veins There runs that warm, forbidden blood That no man dares to dignify In elevated song. The chains That held her race but yesterday Hold still the hands of men. Forbid Is Ethiop. The turbid flood Of prejudice lies stagnant still, And all the world is tainted. Will And wit lie broken as a lance Against the brazen mailed face Of old opinion. None advance Steel-clad and glad to the attack, With trumpet and with song. Look back! Beneath yon pyramids lie hid The histories of her great race. Old Nilus rolls right sullen by, With all his secrets. Who shall say: My father rear'd a pyramid; My brother clipp'd the dragon's wings; My mother was Semiramis? Yea, harps strike idly out of place; Men sing of savage Saxon kings New-born and known but yesterday, And Norman blood presumes to say.... Nay, ye who boast ancestral name And vaunt deeds dignified by time Must not despise her. Who hath worn Since time began a face that is So all-enduring, old like this-- A face like Africa's? Behold! The Sphinx is Africa. The bond Of silence is upon her. Old And white with tombs, and rent and shorn; With raiment wet with tears, and torn, And trampled on, yet all untamed; All naked now, yet not ashamed,-- The mistress of the young world's prime, Whose obelisks still laugh at Time, And lift to heaven her fair name, Sleeps satisfied upon her fame.