The Black Christ & Other Poems/Tribute

by Countee Cullen

Tribute

(To My Mother)

BECAUSE man is not virtuous in himself,Nor kind, nor given to sweet charities,Save goaded by the little kindling elfOf some dear face it pleasures him to please;Some men who else were humbled to the dust,Have marveled that the chastening hand should stay,And never dreamed they held their lives in trustTo one the victor loved a world away.So I, least noble of a churlish race,Least kind of those by nature rough and crude,Have at the intervention of your faceSpared him with whom was my most bitter feudOne moment, and the next, a deed more grand,The helpless fly imprisoned in my hand.