Read the excerpt from "On Liberty and Slavery.”How long have I in bondage lain, And languished to be free! Alas! and must I still complain— Deprived of liberty.Oh, Heaven! and is there no relief This side the silent grave— To soothe the pain—to quell the grief And anguish of a slave?
Read "Like Brothers We Meet.”What does this poem express about the importance of family?
Read "South.”What does the poem express about the tension between appearance and reality?
Read "The Southern Refugee” and "South.”How do both poems address the individual’s search for home?
Read the excerpt from "Pilgrimage.”Here, the Mississippi carved its mud-dark path, a graveyardFor skeletons of sunken riverboat. Here, the river changed its course, Turning away from the city as one turns, forgetting, from the past—The abandoned bluffs, land sloping up above the river’s bend—where nowThe Yazoo fills the Mississippi’s empty bed.Pilgrimage, "Elegy for the Native Guards", "South" from Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey. Copyright (c) 2006 by Natasha Trethewey. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Read the excerpt from "Elegy for the Native Guards.”The Daughters of the Confederacyhas placed a plaque here, at the fort’s entrance—each Confederate soldier’s name raised hardin bronze; no names carved for the Native Guards—2nd Regiment, Union men, black phalanx.What is monument to their legacy?All the grave markers, all the crude headstones—water-lost. Now fish dart among their bones,as we listen for what the saves intone.Only the fort remains, near forty feet high,round, unfinished, half open to the sky,The elements—wind, rain,—God's deliberate eye."Native Guard" from Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey. Copyright (c) 2006 by Natasha Trethewey. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Read "The Southern Refugee.”What does this poem express about the individual’s search for home?
Read "On Liberty and Slavery” and "Duty.”What do these poems have in common?
Read the excerpt from "One Generation Passeth Away and Another Cometh.”Vain bird, a while think what am I, Here entering ‘mid a hawk-like throng; Quickly hatched out, as quick to fly, And dare not tarry long.Where is the mighty and the stout, Who lived this fading world to crave; Left and forever gone without A stone to show their grave.Used with permission of the Chapel Hill Historical Society
Read the excerpt from "Like Brothers We Meet.”The soldier no longer shall roam, But soon shall land safely ashore, Each soon will arrive at his own native home, And struggle in warfare no more.The union of brothers is sweet, Whose wives and children do come, Their sons and fair daughters with pleasure they greet, When long absent fathers come home.Used with permission of the Chapel Hill Historical Society
Read "South.”What does this poem express about the individual’s search for home?
Read "The Southern Refugee” and "South.”How do these poems address the importance of memory differently?
Read "On Liberty and Slavery” and "Duty.”How do these poems address the experience of oppression differently?
Read the excerpt from "South.”Where the roads, buildings, and monuments are named to honor the Confederacy,where that old flag still hangs, I return to Mississippi, state that made a crimeof me—mulatto, half-breed—native in my native land, this place they’ll bury me.Pilgrimage, "Elegy for the Native Guards", "South" from Native Guard by Natasha Trethewey. Copyright (c) 2006 by Natasha Trethewey. Used by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
Read "The Southern Refugee.”Which universal theme is reflected in the poem?
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