Explore "In the Blue Ridge" by Olive Tilford Dargan on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The mountain night is shining, Jim of Tellico, / Shining so it hurts the heart to see / The gleam upon the laurel leaf, the locust shaking snow / To the rippling Nantahala that is laughing up to me, / Hurts till the cry comes and the big tears are free. / O, why should my heart cry to you that will not hear, / Yonder where the ridges lie so still above the town? / But the pain that's calling seems to bring you near, / As the tears in my eyes bring the stars a-swimming down.
Mother sits and cries, with my baby on her knee; / Father curses deep, a-breathing hard your name; / But never do I hear and never do I see, / I with my head low, working out my shame, / Eyes burning dry and my heart like a flame; / For I hate you then -- I hate you, Jim of Tellico, / And grip my needle tighter, every stitch a sin, / The hate growing bigger till the thing I sew / Seems a shroud I'm glad a-making just to lay you in.