James Weldon Johnson, ed. (1871–1938). The Book of American Negro Poetry. 1922.
The Haunted Oak
P
Oh, bough of the old oak-tree;
And why, when I go through the shade you throw,
Runs a shudder over me?
And sap ran free in my veins,
But I saw in the moonlight dim and weird
A guiltless victim’s pains.
I shook with his gurgling moan,
And I trembled sore when they rode away,
And left him here alone.
And set him fast in jail:
Oh, why does the dog howl all night long,
And why does the night wind wail?
And he raised his hand to the sky;
But the beat of hoofs smote on his ear,
And the steady tread drew nigh.
Over the moonlit road?
And what is the spur that keeps the pace,
What is the galling goad?
“Ho, keeper, do not stay!
We are friends of him whom you hold within,
And we fain would take him away
With mind to do him wrong;
They have no care for his innocence,
And the rope they bear is long.”
They have fooled the man with lies;
The bolts unbar, the locks are drawn,
And the great door open flies.
And hard and fast they ride,
And the leader laughs low down in his throat,
As they halt my trunk beside.
And the doctor one of white,
And the minister, with his oldest son,
Was curiously bedight.
’Tis but a little space,
And the time will come when these shall dread
The mem’ry of your face.
And the weight of him in my grain,
I feel in the throe of his final woe
The touch of my own last pain.
On a bough that bears the ban;
I am burned with dread, I am dried and dead,
From the curse of a guiltless man.
And goes to hunt the deer,
And ever another rides his soul
In the guise of a mortal fear.
And never a night stays he;
For I feel his curse as a haunted bough
On the trunk of a haunted tree.