use details from the poem to explain who theses two sets of ghosts are and show how their worlds are very?

Question

cont...
different.

the poem says;
poplars are standing there still as death
And ghosts of dead men
Meet their ladies walking
Two by two beneath the shade
And standing on the marble steps

There is a sound of music echoing
Through the open door
And in the field there is another sound tinkling in the cotton;
Chains of bondsmen dragging on the ground.

The years go back with an iron clack,
A hand is on the gate,
A dry leaf trembles on the wall.
Ghosts are walking.
They have broken roses down
And poplars stand there still as death.

Answer 1

Arna W. Bontemps, like his colleagues Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, was a wise and gifted writer of the Harlem Renaissance. [1] His own poetry, and many of the poems he collected in this three historic anthologies, were gentle, yet firm, in their celebration of the rise of African Americans from suffering and deprivation.

This poem, "Southern Mansion," is a classic example. The first "ghosts of dead men" represent the men of the plantation South, walking with their ladies, standing on the marbled mansion's steps, leisurely, idly listening to music echoing from the luxurious parlor or drawing room. The second set of ghosts, unseen for the time being but heard, are the slaves working in the fields, bound in the bitter chains of servitude.

But the times are a-changing. Even in this ghostly (ghastly) scene there are premonitions of the downfall of the plantation owners: "A hand is on the gate." The artificial aristocracy, fragile and barren, is about to fall: "A dry leaf trembles on the wall."

By the time of Bontemps' writing, the fall of the first set of ghosts has come about (the roses are "broken down") and the rise of the second set is underway ("poplars stand there still"). The plantations, like roses, are beautiful but thorny, and subject to the ravages of time. The unseen field workers, like the poplars, are strong, tall, and stalwart. They "stand their still."