Explore "The Ordeal" by Georgia Douglas Johnson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Ho: my brother, / Pass me not by so scornfully / I'm doing this living of being black, / Perhaps I bear your own life-pack, / And heavy, heavy is the load / That bends my body to the road.
But I have kept a smile for fate, / I neither cry, nor cringe, nor hate, / Intrepidly, I strive to bear / This handicap: The planets wear / The Maker's imprint, and with mine / I swing into their rhythmic line; / I ask -- only for destiny, / Mine, not thine.