TO A BLACK WOMAN.

Timaru Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 817, 18 November 1872, Page 4 (Supplement)

TO A BLACK WOMAN.

[From the Australasian.] Daughter of Eve, draw near; I would behold thee. Good life ! could ever arm of man enfold thee ? Did the same nature that made Phrvne mould thee? • Come f.hou to leeward; for thy balmy presence Savoureth not a whit of mille-fleuressenss : My nose is no insentient excrescence. Thou art not beautiful, I tell thee plainly ; 0 thou uugainliest of things uugainly. Who thinks thee leBS than hideous dotes insauely. Mo3t unm3thetical of things terrestrial, Hadst thou indeed an original celestial ? Thy lineaments ore positively bestial. Yet thou my sister art, the clergy tell me, Though, truth to state, thy brutish looks compel me To hope these parsons merely want to sell me. A hundred times and more I've heard and read it, But if St. Paul himself came down and said it, Upon my soul, I could not give it credit. " God's image cut m ebony," says some one, 'Tis to bo hoped some day thou mayst become one, The present image is a very rum one. Thy face, " the human face divine ! " Oh Moses ! 1 can't get over it ; which, I suppose, ia Because no bridge upon thy sunken nose is. Thy nose appeareth but a transverse section j Thy moufch hath no particular direction — A flabby-rimmed abyss of imperfection. .Thy skull development mine eyo displeases, Thou wilt not suffer much from brain diseases, Thy facial angle forty-five degrees is. The coarseness of thy tresses ia distressing, With grease and raddle firmly coalescing ; I cannot laud thy system of "top-dressing." Thy dress is somewhat scant for proper feel- . ing— As is thy flesh, too — scarce thy bones conceal* ing J Thy calves unquestionably want re-vealing. Thy mangy skin is hideous with tattooing, And legible with hieroglyphic wooing Sweet things m art of some fierce lover's doing ; For thou some lover hasfc, I bet a guinea, Some partner m thy fetid ignominy, The " raison d'etre " of this piccaninny. What must he be whose eye thou hast de» lighted, His sense of beauty hopelessly benighted. The canons of his taste how badly sighted. What must his gauge be if thy features pleased him ? If lordship of such limbs as thine appeased him It was nofc " calf love " certainly that seized him,' And doth he smooth thine hours with oily talking ? And take thee conjugally out a walking ? And crown thy transports with, a tomahawking? I guess his love and anger are combined so, His passions on thy shoulders are defined so, His " passages of love " are " underlined " so. Tell me thy name— What Helen ? (Oh CEnone ! That name bequeathed to one so foul and bony, Avengeth well thy ruptured matrimony). Ere's daughter, with that skull and that complexion, What principle of " natural selection " Gave thee with Eve the most remote con--nexion ? Sister of L B L — of Mrs Stowe too — Of E B Browning— Harriet Martineau, too. Do theologians know where fibbers go to ? Of dear George Elliot whom I worship daily — Of Charlotte Bronte and Joanna Baillie — Methinks that theory is rather scaly. Thy primal parents came a period later, The handiwork of some vile imitator ; I fear they had the devil's " imprimatur." This m the retrospect. Now, -what's before thee? The white man's heaven, I fear, would simply bore thee j Ten minutes of doxology would floor thee, Thy paradise should be a land of Goshen, Where appetite should be thy sole devotion, And surfeit be the climax of emotion. A land of bunya-bunyas towering splendid, Of " sugar bags,', on every tree suspended, - A paradise of sleep and riot blended ; Of tons of 'baccy, and tons more to follow; Of wallaby as much as thou couldst swallow j Of hollow trees, with 'possums m the hollow. There, undismayed by frost, or flood, or thunder, I, .. As joyous as the skies thou roamest under, There shouldst thou — Coo-ey ! Stop ! She's off! No wonder.