Half-Way

This poem was written by Ellen Murray, a co-founder of the Penn School on St. Helena Island in South Carolina. The poem was originally published in the National Anti-Slavery Standard on October 4, 1862.

The purple of the storm
Came mantling on the sun,
Came darkly on the summer earth,
Before the day was done.

The slumberous shade of storm,
The purple of the cloud,
Closed round the cabin of the slave,
A night, a pall, a shroud.

Withered and bent and old,
A woman by the door
Lifted her white head from her hands,
To hear the thunder roar.

A smile of holy trust
Upon her wrinkled face
Smoothed out awhile the heavy lines,
The grief-mark of her race.

The yellow lightning spears
Fell broken to the ground,
The lightning’s crimson arrow-heads
Were flashing all around.

The fig tree o’er her hut
Stirred, as to summer air;
Then stood, a blackened skeleton,
A dead, dry ruin there.

But as the thunder-crash
Rolled heavily and dread,
There was no tone of fear or doubt
In the calm words she said:

“If the next lightning-flash
Should miss my shattered tree,
And glancing through by empty hut,
Should do its work on me;

“Should fold my weary hands,
Should end my failing sight,
At once should send me on my way
Across the land of night;

“Though sudden it might be,
I would not shrink or care,
For e’er I had gone half the way,*
My Lord would meet me there.“

He knows my eyes are dim,
He knows my limbs are weak,
He will not miss me in the dark,
He'll not forget to speak.

“Lest I should lose the path
Along the lonesome vale,
He'll meet me half-way to my home
Lest I should faint or fail.

“Beneath the tree of life
My dwelling he will make,
Where thunders only speak
His word,Or into hymnings break.”

The thunder rolled again -
It only seemed to her
The words of angels, welcoming
A fellow worshipper.
Ellen Murray

*the exact words of an old free-woman of St. Helena, SC.