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Title: The Book of American Negro Poetry

Author: Edited by James Weldon Johnson

Release Date: April 10, 2004 [EBook #11986]

Language: English

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THE BOOK OF AMERICAN NEGRO POETRY

Chosen and Edited
With An Essay On The Negro's Creative Genius

by
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

Author of "Fifty Years and Other Poems"




1922
Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., New York

Printed in the U.S.A. by the Quinn & Boden Company, Rahway, N.J.




CONTENTS


PREFACE

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
  A Negro Love Song
  Little Brown Baby
  Ships That Pass in the Night
  Lover's Lane
  The Debt
  The Haunted Oak
  When de Co'n Pone's Hot
  A Death Song

JAMES EDWIN CAMPBELL
  Negro Serenade
  De Cunjah Man
  Uncle Eph's Banjo Song
  Ol' Doc' Hyar
  When Ol' Sis' Judy Pray
  Compensation

JAMES D. CORROTHERS
  At the Closed Gate of Justice
  Paul Laurence Dunbar
  The Negro Singer
  The Road to the Bow
  In the Matter of Two Men
  An Indignation Dinner
  Dream and the Song

DANIEL WEBSTER DAVIS
  'Weh Down Souf
  Hog Meat

WILLIAM H. A. MOORE
  Dusk Song
  It Was Not Fate

W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS
  A Litany of Atlanta

GEORGE MARION McCLELLAN
  Dogwood Blossoms
  A Butterfly in Church
  The Hills of Sewanee
  The Feet of Judas

WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
  Sandy Star and Willie Gee
    I. Sculptured Worship
    II. Laughing It Out
    III. The Exit
    IV. The Way
    V. Onus Probandi
  Del Cascar
  Turn Me to My Yellow Leaves
  Ironic: LL.D
  Scintilla
  Sic Vita
  Rhapsody

GEORGE REGINALD MARGETSON
  Stanzas from The Fledgling Bard and the Poetry Society

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
  O Black and Unknown Bards
  Sence You Went Away
  The Creation
  The White Witch
  Mother Night
  O Southland
  Brothers
  Fifty Years

JOHN WESLEY HOLLOWAY
  Miss Melerlee
  Calling the Doctor
  The Corn Song
  Black Mammies

LESLIE PINCKNEY HILL
  Tuskegee
  Christmas at Melrose
  Summer Magic
  The Teacher

EDWARD SMYTH JONES
  A Song of Thanks

RAY G. DANDRIDGE
  Time to Die
  'Ittle Touzle Head
  Zalka Peetruza
  Sprin' Fevah
  De Drum Majah

FENTON JOHNSON
  Children of the Sun
  The New Day
  Tired
  The Banjo Player
  The Scarlet Woman

R. NATHANIEL DETT
  The Rubinstein Staccato Etude

GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON
  The Heart of a Woman
  Youth
  Lost Illusions
  I Want to Die While You Love Me
  Welt
  My Little Dreams

CLAUDE McKAY
  The Lynching
  If We Must Die
  To the White Fiends
  The Harlem Dancer
  Harlem Shadows
  After the Winter
  Spring in New Hampshire
  The Tired Worker
  The Barrier
  To O. E. A
  Flame-Heart
  Two-an'-Six

JOSEPH S. COTTER, JR.
  A Prayer
  And What Shall You Say
  Is It Because I Am Black?
  The Band of Gideon
  Rain Music
  Supplication

ROSCOE C. JAMISON
  The Negro Soldiers

JESSIE FAUSET
  La Vie C'est la Vie
  Christmas Eve in France
  Dead Fires
  Oriflamme
  Oblivion

ANNE SPENCER
  Before the Feast of Shushan
  At the Carnival
  The Wife-Woman
  Translation
  Dunbar

ALEX ROGERS
  Why Adam Sinned
  The Rain Song

WAVERLEY TURNER CARMICHAEL
  Keep Me, Jesus, Keep Me
  Winter Is Coming

ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON
  Sonnet

CHARLES BERTRAM JOHNSON
  A Little Cabin
  Negro Poets

OTTO LEYLAND BOHANAN
  The Dawn's Awake!
  The Washer-Woman

THEODORE HENRY SHACKLEFORD
  The Big Bell in Zion

LUCIAN B. WATKINS
  Star of Ethiopia
  Two Points of View
  To Our Friends

BENJAMIN BRAWLEY
  My Hero
  Chaucer

JOSHUA HENRY JONES, JR.
  To a Skull




PREFACE

There is, perhaps, a better excuse for giving an Anthology of American
Negro Poetry to the public than can be offered for many of the anthologies
that have recently been issued. The public, generally speaking, does not
know that there are American Negro poets--to supply this lack of
information is, alone, a work worthy of somebody's effort.

Moreover, the matter of Negro poets and the production of literature by
the colored people in this country involves more than supplying
information that is lacking. It is a matter which has a direct bearing on
the most vital of American problems.

A people may become great through many means, but there is only one
measure by which its greatness is recognized and acknowledged. The final
measure of the greatness of all peoples is the amount and standard of the
literature and art they have produced. The world does not know that a
people is great until that people produces great literature and art. No
people that has produced great literature and art has ever been looked
upon by the world as distinctly inferior.

The status of the Negro in the United States' is more a question of
national mental attitude toward the race than of actual conditions. And
nothing will do more to change that mental attitude and raise his status
than a demonstration of intellectual parity by the Negro through the
production of literature and art.

Is there likelihood that the American Negro will be able to do this? There
is, for the good reason that he possesses the innate powers. He has the
emotional endowment, the originality and artistic conception, and, what is
more important, the power of creating that which has universal appeal and
influence.

I make here what may appear to be a more startling statement by saying
that the Negro has already proved the possession of these powers by being
the creator of the only things artistic that have yet sprung from American
soil and been universally acknowledged as distinctive American products.

These creations by the American Negro may be summed up under four heads.
The first two are the Uncle Remus stories, which were collected by Joel
Chandler Harris, and the "spirituals" or slave songs, to which the Fisk
Jubilee Singers made the public and the musicians of both the United
States and Europe listen. The Uncle Remus stories constitute the greatest
body of folklore that America has produced, and the "spirituals" the
greatest body of folk-song. I shall speak of the "spirituals" later
because they are more than folk-songs, for in them the Negro sounded the
depths, if he did not scale the heights, of music.

The other two creations are the Cakewalk and ragtime. We do not need to go
very far back to remember when cakewalking was the rage in the United
States, Europe and South America. Society in this country and royalty
abroad spent time in practicing the intricate steps. Paris pronounced it
the "poetry of motion." The popularity of the cakewalk passed away but its
influence remained. The influence can be seen to-day on any American stage
where there is dancing.

The influence which the Negro has exercised on the art of dancing in this
country has been almost absolute. For generations the "buck and wing" and
the "stop-time" dances, which are strictly Negro, have been familiar to
American theatre audiences. A few years ago the public discovered the
"turkey trot," the "eagle rock," "ballin' the jack," and several other
varieties that started the modern dance craze. These dances were quickly
followed by the "tango," a dance originated by the Negroes of Cuba and
later transplanted to South America. (This fact is attested by no less
authority than Vincente Blasco Ibanez in his "Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse.") Half the floor space in the country was then turned over to
dancing, and highly paid exponents sprang up everywhere. The most noted,
Mr. Vernon Castle, and, by the way, an Englishman, never danced except to
the music of a colored band, and he never failed to state to his audiences
that most of his dances had long been done by "your colored people," as he
put it.

Any one who witnesses a musical production in which there is dancing
cannot fail to notice the Negro stamp on all the movements; a stamp which
even the great vogue of Russian dances that swept the country about the
time of the popular dance craze could not affect. That peculiar swaying of
the shoulders which you see done everywhere by the blond girls of the
chorus is nothing more than a movement from the Negro dance referred to
above, the "eagle rock." Occasionally the movement takes on a suggestion
of the, now outlawed, "shimmy."

As for Ragtime, I go straight to the statement that it is the one
artistic production by which America is known the world over. It has been
all-conquering. Everywhere it is hailed as "American music."

For a dozen years or so there has been a steady tendency to divorce
Ragtime from the Negro; in fact, to take from him the credit of having
originated it. Probably the younger people of the present generation do
not know that Ragtime is of Negro origin. The change wrought in Ragtime
and the way in which it is accepted by the country have been brought about
chiefly through the change which has gradually been made in the words and
stories accompanying the music. Once the text of all Ragtime songs was
written in Negro dialect, and was about Negroes in the cabin or in the
cotton field or on the levee or at a jubilee or on Sixth Avenue or at a
ball, and about their love affairs. To-day, only a small proportion of
Ragtime songs relate at all to the Negro. The truth is, Ragtime is now
national rather than racial. But that does not abolish in any way the
claim of the American Negro as its originator.

Ragtime music was originated by colored piano players in the questionable
resorts of St. Louis, Memphis, and other Mississippi River towns. These
men did not know any more about the theory of music than they did about
the theory of the universe. They were guided by their natural musical
instinct and talent, but above all by the Negro's extraordinary sense of
rhythm. Any one who is familiar with Ragtime may note that its chief charm
is not in melody, but in rhythms. These players often improvised crude
and, at times, vulgar words to fit the music. This was the beginning of
the Ragtime song.

Ragtime music got its first popular hearing at Chicago during the world's
fair in that city. From Chicago it made its way to New York, and then
started on its universal triumph.

The earliest Ragtime songs, like Topsy, "jes' grew." Some of these
earliest songs were taken down by white men, the words slightly altered or
changed, and published under the names of the arrangers. They sprang into
immediate popularity and earned small fortunes. The first to become widely
known was "The Bully," a levee song which had been long used by
roustabouts along the Mississippi. It was introduced in New York by Miss
May Irwin, and gained instant popularity. Another one of these "jes' grew"
songs was one which for a while disputed for place with Yankee Doodle;
perhaps, disputes it even to-day. That song was "A Hot Time in the Old
Town To-night"; introduced and made popular by the colored regimental
bands during the Spanish-American War.

Later there came along a number of colored men who were able to transcribe
the old songs and write original ones. I was, about that time, writing
words to music for the music show stage in New York. I was collaborating
with my brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, and the late Bob Cole. I remember
that we appropriated about the last one of the old "jes' grew" songs. It
was a song which had been sung for years all through the South. The words
were unprintable, but the tune was irresistible, and belonged to nobody.
We took it, re-wrote the verses, telling an entirely different story from
the original, left the chorus as it was, and published the song, at first
under the name of "Will Handy." It became very popular with college boys,
especially at football games, and perhaps still is. The song was, "Oh,
Didn't He Ramble!"

In the beginning, and for quite a while, almost all of the Ragtime songs
that were deliberately composed were the work of colored writers. Now, the
colored composers, even in this particular field, are greatly outnumbered
by the white.

The reader might be curious to know if the "jes' grew" songs have ceased
to grow. No, they have not; they are growing all the time. The country has
lately been flooded with several varieties of "The Blues." These "Blues,"
too, had their origin in Memphis, and the towns along the Mississippi.
They are a sort of lament of a lover who is feeling "blue" over the loss
of his sweetheart. The "Blues" of Memphis have been adulterated so much on
Broadway that they have lost their pristine hue. But whenever you hear a
piece of music which has a strain like this in it:

[Illustration: Music]

you will know you are listening to something which belonged originally to
Beale Avenue, Memphis, Tennessee. The original "Memphis Blues," so far as
it can be credited to a composer, must be credited to Mr. W. C. Handy, a
colored musician of Memphis.

As illustrations of the genuine Ragtime song in the making, I quote the
words of two that were popular with the Southern colored soldiers in
France. Here is the first:

   "Mah mammy's lyin' in her grave,
      Mah daddy done run away,
    Mah sister's married a gamblin' man,
      An' I've done gone astray.
    Yes, I've done gone astray, po' boy,
      An' I've done gone astray,
    Mah sister's married a gamblin' man,
      An' I've done gone astray, po' boy."

These lines are crude, but they contain something of real poetry, of that
elusive thing which nobody can define and that you can only tell that it
is there when you feel it. You cannot read these lines without becoming
reflective and feeling sorry for "Po' Boy."

Now, take in this word picture of utter dejection:

   "I'm jes' as misabul as I can be,
    I'm unhappy even if I am free,
    I'm feelin' down, I'm feelin' blue;
    I wander 'round, don't know what to do.
    I'm go'n lay mah haid on de railroad line,
    Let de B. & O. come and pacify mah min'."

These lines are, no doubt, one of the many versions of the famous "Blues."
They are also crude, but they go straight to the mark. The last two lines
move with the swiftness of all great tragedy.

In spite of the bans which musicians and music teachers have placed on it,
the people still demand and enjoy Ragtime. In fact, there is not a corner
of the civilized world in which it is not known and liked. And this proves
its originality, for if it were an imitation, the people of Europe, at
least, would not have found it a novelty. And it is proof of a more
important thing, it is proof that Ragtime possesses the vital spark, the
power to appeal universally, without which any artistic production, no
matter how approved its form may be, is dead.

Of course, there are those who will deny that Ragtime is an artistic
production. American musicians, especially, instead of investigating
Ragtime, dismiss it with a contemptuous word. But this has been the course
of scholasticism in every branch of art. Whatever new thing the people
like is pooh-poohed; whatever is popular is regarded as not worth while.
The fact is, nothing great or enduring in music has ever sprung
full-fledged from the brain of any master; the best he gives the world he
gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of
his genius.

Ragtime deserves serious attention. There is a lot of colorless and
vicious imitation, but there is enough that is genuine. In one composition
alone, "The Memphis Blues," the musician will find not only great melodic
beauty, but a polyphonic structure that is amazing.

It is obvious that Ragtime has influenced, and in a large measure,
become our popular music; but not many would know that it has influenced
even our religious music. Those who are familiar with gospel hymns can at
once see this influence if they will compare the songs of thirty years
ago, such as "In the Sweet Bye and Bye," "The Ninety and Nine," etc., with
the up-to-date, syncopated tunes that are sung in Sunday Schools,
Christian Endeavor Societies, Y.M.C.A.'s and like gatherings to-day.

Ragtime has not only influenced American music, it has influenced American
life; indeed, it has saturated American life. It has become the popular
medium for our national expression musically. And who can say that it does
not express the blare and jangle and the surge, too, of our national
spirit?

Any one who doubts that there is a peculiar heel-tickling,
smile-provoking, joy-awakening, response-compelling charm in Ragtime needs
only to hear a skilful performer play the genuine article, needs only to
listen to its bizarre harmonies, its audacious resolutions often
consisting of an abrupt jump from one key to another, its intricate
rhythms in which the accents fall in the most unexpected places but in
which the fundamental beat is never lost in order to be convinced. I
believe it has its place as well as the music which draws from us sighs
and tears.

Now, these dances which I have referred to and Ragtime music may be lower
forms of art, but they are evidence of a power that will some day be
applied to the higher forms. And even now we need not stop at the Negro's
accomplishment through these lower forms. In the "spirituals," or slave
songs, the Negro has given America not only its only folksongs, but a mass
of noble music. I never think of this music but that I am struck by the
wonder, the miracle of its production. How did the men who originated
these songs manage to do it? The sentiments are easily accounted for; they
are, for the most part, taken from the Bible. But the melodies, where did
they come from? Some of them so weirdly sweet, and others so wonderfully
strong. Take, for instance, "Go Down, Moses"; I doubt that there is a
stronger theme in the whole musical literature of the world.

[Illustration: Music (Oppressed so hard they could not stand, Let my
people go. Go down, Mo-ses, way down in E-gypt land, Tell ole Pha-raoh,
Let my people go.)]

It is to be noted that whereas the chief characteristic of Ragtime is
rhythm, the chief characteristic of the "spirituals" is melody. The
melodies of "Steal Away to Jesus," "Swing Low Sweet Chariot," "Nobody
Knows de Trouble I See," "I Couldn't Hear Nobody Pray," "Deep River," "O,
Freedom Over Me," and many others of these songs possess a beauty that
is--what shall I say? poignant. In the riotous rhythms of Ragtime the
Negro expressed his irrepressible buoyancy, his keen response to the sheer
joy of living; in the "spirituals" he voiced his sense of beauty and his
deep religious feeling.

Naturally, not as much can be said for the words of these songs as for the
music. Most of the songs are religious. Some of them are songs expressing
faith and endurance and a longing for freedom. In the religious songs, the
sentiments and often the entire lines are taken bodily from the Bible.
However, there is no doubt that some of these religious songs have a
meaning apart from the Biblical text. It is evident that the opening lines
of "Go Down, Moses,"

   "Go down, Moses,
      'Way down in Egypt land;
    Tell old Pharoah,
      Let my people go."

have a significance beyond the bondage of Israel in Egypt.

The bulk of the lines to these songs, as is the case in all communal
music, is made up of choral iteration and incremental repetition of the
leader's lines. If the words are read, this constant iteration and
repetition are found to be tiresome; and it must be admitted that the
lines themselves are often very trite. And, yet, there is frequently
revealed a flash of real, primitive poetry. I give the following examples:

   "Sometimes I feel like an eagle in de air."

   "You may bury me in de East,
    You may bury me in de West,
    But I'll hear de trumpet sound
    In-a dat mornin'."

   "I know de moonlight, I know de starlight;
      I lay dis body down.
    I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight;
      I lay dis body down.
    I know de graveyard, I know de graveyard,
      When I lay dis body down.
    I walk in de graveyard, I walk troo de graveyard
      To lay dis body down.

    I lay in de grave an' stretch out my arms;
      I lay dis body down.
    I go to de judgment in de evenin' of de day
      When I lay dis body down.
    An' my soul an' yo' soul will meet in de day
      When I lay dis body down."

Regarding the line, "I lay in de grave an' stretch out my arms," Col.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson of Boston, one of the first to give these slave
songs serious study, said: "Never it seems to me, since man first lived
and suffered, was his infinite longing for peace uttered more plaintively
than in that line."

These Negro folksongs constitute a vast mine of material that has been
neglected almost absolutely. The only white writers who have in recent
years given adequate attention and study to this music, that I know of,
are Mr. H.E. Krehbiel and Mrs. Natalie Curtis Burlin. We have our native
composers denying the worth and importance of this music, and trying to
manufacture grand opera out of so-called Indian themes.

But there is a great hope for the development of this music, and that hope
is the Negro himself. A worthy beginning has already been made by
Burleigh, Cook, Johnson, and Dett. And there will yet come great Negro
composers who will take this music and voice through it not only the soul
of their race, but the soul of America.

And does it not seem odd that this greatest gift of the Negro has been the
most neglected of all he possesses? Money and effort have been expended
upon his development in every direction except this. This gift has been
regarded as a kind of side show, something for occasional exhibition;
wherein it is the touchstone, it is the magic thing, it is that by which
the Negro can bridge all chasms. No persons, however hostile, can listen
to Negroes singing this wonderful music without having their hostility
melted down.

This power of the Negro to suck up the national spirit from the soil and
create something artistic and original, which, at the same time, possesses
the note of universal appeal, is due to a remarkable racial gift of
adaptability; it is more than adaptability, it is a transfusive quality.
And the Negro has exercised this transfusive quality not only here in
America, where the race lives in large numbers, but in European countries,
where the number has been almost infinitesimal.

Is it not curious to know that the greatest poet of Russia is Alexander
Pushkin, a man of African descent; that the greatest romancer of France
is Alexander Dumas, a man of African descent; and that one of the greatest
musicians of England is Coleridge-Taylor, a man of African descent?

The fact is fairly well known that the father of Dumas was a Negro of
the French West Indies, and that the father of Coleridge-Taylor was a
native-born African; but the facts concerning Pushkin's African ancestry
are not so familiar.

When Peter the Great was Czar of Russia, some potentate presented him with
a full-blooded Negro of gigantic size. Peter, the most eccentric ruler of
modern times, dressed this Negro up in soldier clothes, christened him
Hannibal, and made him a special body-guard.

But Hannibal had more than size, he had brain and ability. He not only
looked picturesque and imposing in soldier clothes, he showed that he had
in him the making of a real soldier. Peter recognized this, and eventually
made him a general. He afterwards ennobled him, and Hannibal, later,
married one of the ladies of the Russian court. This same Hannibal was
great-grandfather of Pushkin, the national poet of Russia, the man who
bears the same relation to Russian literature that Shakespeare bears to
English literature.

I know the question naturally arises: If out of the few Negroes who have
lived in France there came a Dumas; and out of the few Negroes who have
lived in England there came a Coleridge-Taylor; and if from the man who
was at the time, probably, the only Negro in Russia there sprang that
country's national poet, why have not the millions of Negroes in the
United States with all the emotional and artistic endowment claimed for
them produced a Dumas, or a Coleridge-Taylor, or a Pushkin?

The question seems difficult, but there is an answer. The Negro in the
United States is consuming all of his intellectual energy in this
gruelling race-struggle. And the same statement may be made in a general
way about the white South. Why does not the white South produce literature
and art? The white South, too, is consuming all of its intellectual energy
in this lamentable conflict. Nearly all of the mental efforts of the white
South run through one narrow channel. The life of every Southern white man
and all of his activities are impassably limited by the ever present Negro
problem. And that is why, as Mr. H. L. Mencken puts it, in all that vast
region, with its thirty or forty million people and its territory as large
as a half a dozen Frances or Germanys, there is not a single poet, not a
serious historian, not a creditable composer, not a critic good or bad,
not a dramatist dead or alive.

But, even so, the American Negro has accomplished something in pure
literature. The list of those who have done so would be surprising both by
its length and the excellence of the achievements. One of the great books
written in this country since the Civil War is the work of a colored man,
"The Souls of Black Folk," by W.E.B. Du Bois.

Such a list begins with Phillis Wheatley. In 1761 a slave ship landed a
cargo of slaves in Boston. Among them was a little girl seven or eight
years of age. She attracted the attention of John Wheatley, a wealthy
gentleman of Boston, who purchased her as a servant for his wife. Mrs.
Wheatley was a benevolent woman. She noticed the girl's quick mind and
determined to give her opportunity for its development. Twelve years later
Phillis published a volume of poems. The book was brought out in London,
where Phillis was for several months an object of great curiosity and
attention.

Phillis Wheatley has never been given her rightful place in American
literature. By some sort of conspiracy she is kept out of most of the
books, especially the text-books on literature used in the schools. Of
course, she is not a _great_ American poet--and in her day there were
no great American poets--but she is an important American poet. Her
importance, if for no other reason, rests on the fact that, save one, she
is the first in order of time of all the women poets of America. And she
is among the first of all American poets to issue a volume.

It seems strange that the books generally give space to a mention of Urian
Oakes, President of Harvard College, and to quotations from the crude and
lengthy elegy which he published in 1667; and print examples from the
execrable versified version of the Psalms made by the New England divines,
and yet deny a place to Phillis Wheatley.

Here are the opening lines from the elegy by Oakes, which is quoted from
in most of the books on American literature:

   "Reader, I am no poet, but I grieve.
    Behold here what that passion can do,
    That forced a verse without Apollo's leave,
    And whether the learned sisters would or no."

There was no need for Urian to admit what his handiwork declared. But this
from the versified Psalms is still worse, yet it is found in the books:

   "The Lord's song sing can we? being
    in stranger's land, then let
    lose her skill my right hand if I
    Jerusalem forget."

Anne Bradstreet preceded Phillis Wheatley by a little over twenty years.
She published her volume of poems, "The Tenth Muse," in 1750. Let us
strike a comparison between the two. Anne Bradstreet was a wealthy,
cultivated Puritan girl, the daughter of Thomas Dudley, Governor of Bay
Colony. Phillis, as we know, was a Negro slave girl born in Africa. Let us
take them both at their best and in the same vein. The following stanza is
from Anne's poem entitled "Contemplation":

   "While musing thus with contemplation fed,
    And thousand fancies buzzing in my brain,
    The sweet tongued Philomel percht o'er my head,
    And chanted forth a most melodious strain,
    Which rapt me so with wonder and delight,
    I judged my hearing better than my sight,
    And wisht me wings with her awhile to take my flight."

And the following is from Phillis' poem entitled "Imagination":

   "Imagination! who can sing thy force?
    Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
    Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
    The empyreal palace of the thundering God,
    We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
    And leave the rolling universe behind,
    From star to star the mental optics rove,
    Measure the skies, and range the realms above,
    There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
    Or with new worlds amaze the unbounded soul."

We do not think the black woman suffers much by comparison with the white.
Thomas Jefferson said of Phillis: "Religion has produced a Phillis
Wheatley, but it could not produce a poet; her poems are beneath
contempt." It is quite likely that Jefferson's criticism was directed more
against religion than against Phillis' poetry. On the other hand, General
George Washington wrote her with his own hand a letter in which he thanked
her for a poem which she had dedicated to him. He, later, received her
with marked courtesy at his camp at Cambridge.

It appears certain that Phillis was the first person to apply to George
Washington the phrase, "First in peace." The phrase occurs in her poem
addressed to "His Excellency, General George Washington," written in 1775.
The encomium, "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his
countrymen" was originally used in the resolutions presented to Congress
on the death of Washington, December, 1799.

Phillis Wheatley's poetry is the poetry of the Eighteenth Century. She
wrote when Pope and Gray were supreme; it is easy to see that Pope was her
model. Had she come under the influence of Wordsworth, Byron or Keats or
Shelley, she would have done greater work. As it is, her work must not be
judged by the work and standards of a later day, but by the work and
standards of her own day and her own contemporaries. By this method of
criticism she stands out as one of the important characters in the making
of American literature, without any allowances for her sex or her
antecedents.

According to "A Bibliographical Checklist of American Negro Poetry,"
compiled by Mr. Arthur A. Schomburg, more than one hundred Negroes in the
United States have published volumes of poetry ranging in size from
pamphlets to books of from one hundred to three hundred pages. About
thirty of these writers fill in the gap between Phillis Wheatley and Paul
Laurence Dunbar. Just here it is of interest to note that a Negro wrote
and published a poem before Phillis Wheatley arrived in this country from
Africa. He was Jupiter Hammon, a slave belonging to a Mr. Lloyd of
Queens-Village, Long Island. In 1760 Hammon published a poem, eighty-eight
lines in length, entitled "An Evening Thought, Salvation by Christ, with
Penettential Cries." In 1788 he published "An Address to Miss Phillis
Wheatley, Ethiopian Poetess in Boston, who came from Africa at eight years
of age, and soon became acquainted with the Gospel of Jesus Christ." These
two poems do not include all that Hammon wrote.

The poets between Phillis Wheatley and Dunbar must be considered more in
the light of what they attempted than of what they accomplished. Many of
them showed marked talent, but barely a half dozen of them demonstrated
even mediocre mastery of technique in the use of poetic material and
forms. And yet there are several names that deserve mention. George M.
Horton, Frances E. Harper, James M. Bell and Alberry A. Whitman, all merit
consideration when due allowances are made for their limitations in
education, training and general culture. The limitations of Horton were
greater than those of either of the others; he was born a slave in North
Carolina in 1797, and as a young man began to compose poetry without being
able to write it down. Later he received some instruction from professors
of the University of North Carolina, at which institution he was employed
as a janitor. He published a volume of poems, "The Hope of Liberty," in
1829.

Mrs. Harper, Bell and Whitman would stand out if only for the reason that
each of them attempted sustained work. Mrs. Harper published her first
volume of poems in 1854, but later she published "Moses, a Story of the
Nile," a poem which ran to 52 closely printed pages. Bell in 1864
published a poem of 28 pages in celebration of President Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation. In 1870 he published a poem of 32 pages in
celebration of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the
Constitution. Whitman published his first volume of poems, a book of 253
pages, in 1877; but in 1884 he published "The Rape of Florida," an epic
poem written in four cantos and done in the Spenserian stanza, and which
ran to 97 closely printed pages. The poetry of both Mrs. Harper and of
Whitman had a large degree of popularity; one of Mrs. Harper's books went
through more than twenty editions.

Of these four poets, it is Whitman who reveals not only the greatest
imagination but also the more skilful workmanship. His lyric power at its
best may be judged from the following stanza from the "Rape of Florida":

   "'Come now, my love, the moon is on the lake;
    Upon the waters is my light canoe;
    Come with me, love, and gladsome oars shall make
    A music on the parting wave for you.
    Come o'er the waters deep and dark and blue;
    Come where the lilies in the marge have sprung,
    Come with me, love, for Oh, my love is true!'
    This is the song that on the lake was sung,
    The boatman sang it when his heart was young."

Some idea of Whitman's capacity for dramatic narration may be gained from
the following lines taken from "Not a Man, and Yet a Man," a poem of even
greater length than "The Rape of Florida":

   "A flash of steely lightning from his hand,
    Strikes down the groaning leader of the band;
    Divides his startled comrades, and again
    Descending, leaves fair Dora's captors slain.
    Her, seizing then within a strong embrace,
    Out in the dark he wheels his flying pace;

    He speaks not, but with stalwart tenderness
    Her swelling bosom firm to his doth press;
    Springs like a stag that flees the eager hound,
    And like a whirlwind rustles o'er the ground.
    Her locks swim in dishevelled wildness o'er
    His shoulders, streaming to his waist and more;
    While on and on, strong as a rolling flood,
    His sweeping footsteps part the silent wood."

It is curious and interesting to trace the growth of individuality and
race consciousness in this group of poets. Jupiter Hammon's verses were
almost entirely religious exhortations. Only very seldom does Phillis
Wheatley sound a native note. Four times in single lines she refers to
herself as "Afric's muse." In a poem of admonition addressed to the
students at the "University of Cambridge in New England" she refers to
herself as follows:

   "Ye blooming plants of human race divine,
    An Ethiop tells you 'tis your greatest foe."

But one looks in vain for some outburst or even complaint against the
bondage of her people, for some agonizing cry about her native land. In
two poems she refers definitely to Africa as her home, but in each
instance there seems to be under the sentiment of the lines a feeling of
almost smug contentment at her own escape therefrom. In the poem, "On
Being Brought from Africa to America," she says:

   "'Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land,
    Taught my benighted soul to understand
    That there's a God and there's a Saviour too;
    Once I redemption neither sought or knew.
    Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
    'Their color is a diabolic dye.'
    Remember, Christians, Negroes black as Cain,
    May be refined, and join th' angelic train."

In the poem addressed to the Earl of Dartmouth, she speaks of freedom and
makes a reference to the parents from whom she was taken as a child, a
reference which cannot but strike the reader as rather unimpassioned:

   "Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
    Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
    Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
    By feeling hearts alone best understood;
    I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
    Was snatch'd from Afric's fancy'd happy seat;
    What pangs excruciating must molest,
    What sorrows labor in my parents' breast?
    Steel'd was that soul and by no misery mov'd
    That from a father seiz'd his babe belov'd;
    Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
    Others may never feel tyrannic sway?"

The bulk of Phillis Wheatley's work consists of poems addressed to people
of prominence. Her book was dedicated to the Countess of Huntington, at
whose house she spent the greater part of her time while in England. On
his repeal of the Stamp Act, she wrote a poem to King George III, whom she
saw later; another poem she wrote to the Earl of Dartmouth, whom she knew.
A number of her verses were addressed to other persons of distinction.
Indeed, it is apparent that Phillis was far from being a democrat. She was
far from being a democrat not only in her social ideas but also in her
political ideas; unless a religious meaning is given to the closing lines
of her ode to General Washington, she was a decided royalist:

   "A crown, a mansion, and a throne that shine
    With gold unfading, Washington! be thine."

Nevertheless, she was an ardent patriot. Her ode to General Washington
(1775), her spirited poem, "On Major General Lee" (1776) and her poem,
"Liberty and Peace," written in celebration of the close of the war,
reveal not only strong patriotic feeling but an understanding of the
issues at stake. In her poem, "On Major General Lee," she makes her hero
reply thus to the taunts of the British commander into whose hands he has
been delivered through treachery:

                       "O arrogance of tongue!
    And wild ambition, ever prone to wrong!
    Believ'st thou, chief, that armies such as thine
    Can stretch in dust that heaven-defended line?
    In vain allies may swarm from distant lands,
    And demons aid in formidable bands,
    Great as thou art, thou shun'st the field of fame,
    Disgrace to Britain and the British name!
    When offer'd combat by the noble foe,
    (Foe to misrule) why did the sword forego
    The easy conquest of the rebel-land?
    Perhaps TOO easy for thy martial hand.

    What various causes to the field invite!
    For plunder YOU, and we for freedom fight,
    Her cause divine with generous ardor fires,
    And every bosom glows as she inspires!
    Already thousands of your troops have fled
    To the drear mansions of the silent dead:
    Columbia, too, beholds with streaming eyes
    Her heroes fall--'tis freedom's sacrifice!
    So wills the power who with convulsive storms
    Shakes impious realms, and nature's face deforms;
    Yet those brave troops, innum'rous as the sands,
    One soul inspires, one General Chief commands;
    Find in your train of boasted heroes, one
    To match the praise of Godlike Washington.
    Thrice happy Chief in whom the virtues join,
    And heaven taught prudence speaks the man divine."

What Phillis Wheatley failed to achieve is due in no small degree to her
education and environment. Her mind was steeped in the classics; her
verses are filled with classical and mythological allusions. She knew Ovid
thoroughly and was familiar with other Latin authors. She must have known
Alexander Pope by heart. And, too, she was reared and sheltered in a
wealthy and cultured family,--a wealthy and cultured Boston family; she
never had the opportunity to learn life; she never found out her own true
relation to life and to her surroundings. And it should not be forgotten
that she was only about thirty years old when she died. The impulsion or
the compulsion that might have driven her genius off the worn paths, out
on a journey of exploration, Phillis Wheatley never received. But,
whatever her limitations, she merits more than America has accorded her.

Horton, who was born three years after Phillis Wheatley's death, expressed
in all of his poetry strong complaint at his condition of slavery and a
deep longing for freedom. The following verses are typical of his style
and his ability:

   "Alas! and am I born for this,
      To wear this slavish chain?
    Deprived of all created bliss,
      Through hardship, toil, and pain?

           *       *       *       *       *

    Come, Liberty! thou cheerful sound,
      Roll through my ravished ears;
    Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,
      And drive away my fears."

In Mrs. Harper we find something more than the complaint and the longing
of Horton. We find an expression of a sense of wrong and injustice. The
following stanzas are from a poem addressed to the white women of America:

   "You can sigh o'er the sad-eyed Armenian
      Who weeps in her desolate home.
    You can mourn o'er the exile of Russia
      From kindred and friends doomed to roam.

           *       *       *       *       *

    But hark! from our Southland are floating
      Sobs of anguish, murmurs of pain,
    And women heart-stricken are weeping
      O'er their tortured and slain.

           *       *       *       *       *

    Have ye not, oh, my favored sisters,
      Just a plea, a prayer or a tear
    For mothers who dwell 'neath the shadows
      Of agony, hatred and fear?

           *       *       *       *       *

    Weep not, oh my well sheltered sisters,
      Weep not for the Negro alone,
    But weep for your sons who must gather
      The crops which their fathers have sown."

Whitman, in the midst of "The Rape of Florida," a poem in which he related
the taking of the State of Florida from the Seminoles, stops and discusses
the race question. He discusses it in many other poems; and he discusses
it from many different angles. In Whitman we find not only an expression
of a sense of wrong and injustice, but we hear a note of faith and a note
also of defiance. For example, in the opening to Canto II of "The Rape of
Florida":

   "Greatness by nature cannot be entailed;
    It is an office ending with the man,--
    Sage, hero, Saviour, tho' the Sire be hailed,
    The son may reach obscurity in the van:
    Sublime achievements know no patent plan,
    Man's immortality's a book with seals,
    And none but God shall open--none else can--
    But opened, it the mystery reveals,--
    Manhood's conquest of man to heaven's respect appeals.

   "Is manhood less because man's face is black?
    Let thunders of the loosened seals reply!
    Who shall the rider's restive steed turn back,
    Or who withstand the arrows he lets fly
    Between the mountains of eternity?
    Genius ride forth! Thou gift and torch of heav'n!
    The mastery is kindled in thine eye;
    To conquest ride! thy bow of strength is giv'n--
    The trampled hordes of caste before thee shall be driv'n!

           *       *       *       *       *

   "'Tis hard to judge if hatred of one's race,
    By those who deem themselves superior-born,
    Be worse than that quiescence in disgrace,
    Which only merits--and should only--scorn.
    Oh, let me see the Negro night and morn,
    Pressing and fighting in, for place and power!
    All earth is place--all time th' auspicious hour,
    While heaven leans forth to look, oh, will he quail or cower?

   "Ah! I abhor his protest and complaint!
    His pious looks and patience I despise!
    He can't evade the test, disguised as saint;
    The manly voice of freedom bids him rise,
    And shake himself before Philistine eyes!
    And, like a lion roused, no sooner than
    A foe dare come, play all his energies,
    And court the fray with fury if he can;
    For hell itself respects a fearless, manly man."

It may be said that none of these poets strike a deep native strain or
sound a distinctively original note, either in matter or form. That is
true; but the same thing may be said of all the American poets down to the
writers of the present generation, with the exception of Poe and Walt
Whitman. The thing in which these black poets are mostly excelled by their
contemporaries is mere technique.


Paul Laurence Dunbar stands out as the first poet from the Negro race in
the United States to show a combined mastery over poetic material and
poetic technique, to reveal innate literary distinction in what he wrote,
and to maintain a high level of performance. He was the first to rise to a
height from which he could take a perspective view of his own race. He was
the first to see objectively its humor, its superstitions, its
shortcomings; the first to feel sympathetically its heart-wounds, its
yearnings, its aspirations, and to voice them all in a purely literary
form.

Dunbar's fame rests chiefly on his poems in Negro dialect. This appraisal
of him is, no doubt, fair; for in these dialect poems he not only carried
his art to the highest point of perfection, but he made a contribution to
American literature unlike what any one else had made, a contribution
which, perhaps, no one else could have made. Of course, Negro dialect
poetry was written before Dunbar wrote, most of it by white writers; but
the fact stands out that Dunbar was the first to use it as a medium for
the true interpretation of Negro character and psychology. And, yet,
dialect poetry does not constitute the whole or even the bulk of Dunbar's
work. In addition to a large number of poems of a very high order done in
literary English, he was the author of four novels and several volumes of
short stories.

Indeed, Dunbar did not begin his career as a writer of dialect. I may be
pardoned for introducing here a bit of reminiscence. My personal
friendship with Paul Dunbar began before he had achieved recognition, and
continued to be close until his death. When I first met him he had
published a thin volume, "Oak and Ivy," which was being sold chiefly
through his own efforts. "Oak and Ivy" showed no distinctive Negro
influence, but rather the influence of James Whitcomb Riley. At this time
Paul and I were together every day for several months. He talked to me a
great deal about his hopes and ambitions. In these talks he revealed that
he had reached a realization of the possibilities of poetry in the
dialect, together with a recognition of the fact that it offered the
surest way by which he could get a hearing. Often he said to me: "I've
got to write dialect poetry; it's the only way I can get them to listen
to me." I was with Dunbar at the beginning of what proved to be his last
illness. He said to me then: "I have not grown. I am writing the same
things I wrote ten years ago, and am writing them no better." His
self-accusation was not fully true; he had grown, and he had gained a
surer control of his art, but he had not accomplished the greater things
of which he was constantly dreaming; the public had held him to the things
for which it had accorded him recognition. If Dunbar had lived he would
have achieved some of those dreams, but even while he talked so dejectedly
to me he seemed to feel that he was not to live. He died when he was only
thirty-three.

It has a bearing on this entire subject to note that Dunbar was of unmixed
Negro blood; so, as the greatest figure in literature which the colored
race in the United States has produced, he stands as an example at once
refuting and confounding those who wish to believe that whatever
extraordinary ability an Aframerican shows is due to an admixture of white
blood.

As a man, Dunbar was kind and tender. In conversation he was brilliant and
polished. His voice was his chief charm, and was a great element in his
success as a reader of his own works. In his actions he was impulsive as a
child, sometimes even erratic; indeed, his intimate friends almost looked
upon him as a spoiled boy. He was always delicate in health.
Temperamentally, he belonged to that class of poets who Taine says are
vessels too weak to contain the spirit of poetry, the poets whom poetry
kills, the Byrons, the Burns's, the De Mussets, the Poes.

To whom may he be compared, this boy who scribbled his early verses while
he ran an elevator, whose youth was a battle against poverty, and who, in
spite of almost insurmountable obstacles, rose to success? A comparison
between him and Burns is not unfitting. The similarity between many phases
of their lives is remarkable, and their works are not incommensurable.
Burns took the strong dialect of his people and made it classic; Dunbar
took the humble speech of his people and in it wrought music.

Mention of Dunbar brings up for consideration the fact that, although he
is the most outstanding figure in literature among the Aframericans of the
United States, he does not stand alone among the Aframericans of the whole
Western world. There are Placido and Manzano in Cuba; Vieux and Durand in
Haiti, Machado de Assis in Brazil; Leon Laviaux in Martinique, and others
still that might be mentioned, who stand on a plane with or even above
Dunbar. Placido and Machado de Assis rank as great in the literatures of
their respective countries without any qualifications whatever. They are
world figures in the literature of the Latin languages. Machado de Assis
is somewhat handicapped in this respect by having as his tongue and medium
the lesser known Portuguese, but Placido, writing in the language of
Spain, Mexico, Cuba and of almost the whole of South America, is
universally known. His works have been republished in the original in
Spain, Mexico and in most of the Latin-American countries; several
editions have been published in the United States; translations of his
works have been made into French and German.

Placido is in some respects the greatest of all the Cuban poets. In sheer
genius and the fire of inspiration he surpasses even the more finished
Heredia. Then, too, his birth, his life and his death ideally contained
the tragic elements that go into the making of a halo about a poet's head.
Placido was born in Habana in 1809. The first months of his life were
passed in a foundling asylum; indeed, his real name, Gabriel de la
Concepcion Valdes, was in honor of its founder. His father took him out of
the asylum, but shortly afterwards went to Mexico and died there. His
early life was a struggle against poverty; his youth and manhood was a
struggle for Cuban independence. His death placed him in the list of Cuban
martyrs. On the 27th of June, 1844, he was lined up against a wall with
ten others and shot by order of the Spanish authorities on a charge of
conspiracy. In his short but eventful life he turned out work which bulks
more than six hundred pages. During the few hours preceding his execution
he wrote three of his best known poems, among them his famous sonnet,
"Mother, Farewell!"

Placido's sonnet to his mother has been translated into every important
language; William Cullen Bryant did it in English; but in spite of its
wide popularity, it is, perhaps, outside of Cuba the least understood of
all Placido's poems. It is curious to note how Bryant's translation
totally misses the intimate sense of the delicate subtility of the poem.
The American poet makes it a tender and loving farewell of a son who is
about to die to a heart-broken mother; but that is not the kind of a
farewell that Placido intended to write or did write.

The key to the poem is in the first word, and the first word is the
Spanish conjunction _Si_ (if). The central idea, then, of the sonnet
is, "If the sad fate which now overwhelms me should bring a pang to your
heart, do not weep, for I die a glorious death and sound the last note of
my lyre to you." Bryant either failed to understand or ignored the opening
word, "If," because he was not familiar with the poet's history.

While Placido's father was a Negro, his mother was a Spanish white woman,
a dancer in one of the Habana theatres. At his birth she abandoned him to
a foundling asylum, and perhaps never saw him again, although it is known
that she outlived her son. When the poet came down to his last hours he
remembered that somewhere there lived a woman who was his mother; that
although she had heartlessly abandoned him; that although he owed her no
filial duty, still she might, perhaps, on hearing of his sad end feel some
pang of grief or sadness; so he tells her in his last words that he dies
happy and bids her not to weep. This he does with nobility and dignity,
but absolutely without affection. Taking into account these facts, and
especially their humiliating and embittering effect upon a soul so
sensitive as Placido's, this sonnet, in spite of the obvious weakness of
the sestet as compared with the octave, is a remarkable piece of work.[1]

[Footnote 1: Placido's sonnet and two English versions will be found in
the Appendix.]

In considering the Aframerican poets of the Latin languages I am impelled
to think that, as up to this time the colored poets of greater
universality have come out of the Latin-American countries rather than out
of the United States, they will continue to do so for a good many years.
The reason for this I hinted at in the first part of this preface. The
colored poet in the United States labors within limitations which he
cannot easily pass over. He is always on the defensive or the offensive.
The pressure upon him to be propagandic is well nigh irresistible. These
conditions are suffocating to breadth and to real art in poetry. In
addition he labors under the handicap of finding culture not entirely
colorless in the United States. On the other hand, the colored poet of
Latin-America can voice the national spirit without any reservations. And
he will be rewarded without any reservations, whether it be to place him
among the great or declare him the greatest.

So I think it probable that the first world-acknowledged Aframerican poet
will come out of Latin-America. Over against this probability, of course,
is the great advantage possessed by the colored poet in the United States
of writing in the world-conquering English language.

This preface has gone far beyond what I had in mind when I started. It was
my intention to gather together the best verses I could find by Negro
poets and present them with a bare word of introduction. It was not my
plan to make this collection inclusive nor to make the book in any sense a
book of criticism. I planned to present only verses by contemporary
writers; but, perhaps, because this is the first collection of its kind, I
realized the absence of a starting-point and was led to provide one and to
fill in with historical data what I felt to be a gap.

It may be surprising to many to see how little of the poetry being written
by Negro poets to-day is being written in Negro dialect. The newer Negro
poets show a tendency to discard dialect; much of the subject-matter which
went into the making of traditional dialect poetry, 'possums, watermelons,
etc., they have discarded altogether, at least, as poetic material. This
tendency will, no doubt, be regretted by the majority of white readers;
and, indeed, it would be a distinct loss if the American Negro poets threw
away this quaint and musical folk-speech as a medium of expression. And
yet, after all, these poets are working through a problem not realized by
the reader, and, perhaps, by many of these poets themselves not realized
consciously. They are trying to break away from, not Negro dialect itself,
but the limitations on Negro dialect imposed by the fixing effects of long
convention.

The Negro in the United States has achieved or been placed in a certain
artistic niche. When he is thought of artistically, it is as a
happy-go-lucky, singing, shuffling, banjo-picking being or as a more or
less pathetic figure. The picture of him is in a log cabin amid fields of
cotton or along the levees. Negro dialect is naturally and by long
association the exact instrument for voicing this phase of Negro life; and
by that very exactness it is an instrument with but two full stops, humor
and pathos. So even when he confines himself to purely racial themes, the
Aframerican poet realizes that there are phases of Negro life in the
United States which cannot be treated in the dialect either adequately or
artistically. Take, for example, the phases rising out of life in Harlem,
that most wonderful Negro city in the world. I do not deny that a Negro in
a log cabin is more picturesque than a Negro in a Harlem flat, but the
Negro in the Harlem flat is here, and he is but part of a group growing
everywhere in the country, a group whose ideals are becoming increasingly
more vital than those of the traditionally artistic group, even if its
members are less picturesque.

What the colored poet in the United States needs to do is something like
what Synge did for the Irish; he needs to find a form that will express
the racial spirit by symbols from within rather than by symbols from
without, such as the mere mutilation of English spelling and
pronunciation. He needs a form that is freer and larger than dialect, but
which will still hold the racial flavor; a form expressing the imagery,
the idioms, the peculiar turns of thought, and the distinctive humor and
pathos, too, of the Negro, but which will also be capable of voicing the
deepest and highest emotions and aspirations, and allow of the widest
range of subjects and the widest scope of treatment.

Negro dialect is at present a medium that is not capable of giving
expression to the varied conditions of Negro life in America, and much
less is it capable of giving the fullest interpretation of Negro character
and psychology. This is no indictment against the dialect as dialect, but
against the mould of convention in which Negro dialect in the United
States has been set. In time these conventions may become lost, and the
colored poet in the United States may sit down to write in dialect without
feeling that his first line will put the general reader in a frame of mind
which demands that the poem be humorous or pathetic. In the meantime,
there is no reason why these poets should not continue to do the beautiful
things that can be done, and done best, in the dialect.

In stating the need for Aframerican poets in the United States to work out
a new and distinctive form of expression I do not wish to be understood to
hold any theory that they should limit themselves to Negro poetry, to
racial themes; the sooner they are able to write _American_ poetry
spontaneously, the better. Nevertheless, I believe that the richest
contribution the Negro poet can make to the American literature of the
future will be the fusion into it of his own individual artistic gifts.

Not many of the writers here included, except Dunbar, are known at all to
the general reading public; and there is only one of these who has a
widely recognized position in the American literary world, he is William
Stanley Braithwaite. Mr. Braithwaite is not only unique in this respect,
but he stands unique among all the Aframerican writers the United States
has yet produced. He has gained his place, taking as the standard and
measure for his work the identical standard and measure applied to
American writers and American literature. He has asked for no allowances
or rewards, either directly or indirectly, on account of his race.

Mr. Braithwaite is the author of two volumes of verses, lyrics of delicate
and tenuous beauty. In his more recent and uncollected poems he shows
himself more and more decidedly the mystic. But his place in American
literature is due more to his work as a critic and anthologist than to his
work as a poet. There is still another role he has played, that of friend
of poetry and poets. It is a recognized fact that in the work which
preceded the present revival of poetry in the United States, no one
rendered more unremitting and valuable service than Mr. Braithwaite. And
it can be said that no future study of American poetry of this age can be
made without reference to Braithwaite.

Two authors included in the book are better known for their work in prose
than in poetry: W.E.B. Du Bois whose well-known prose at its best is,
however, impassioned and rhythmical; and Benjamin Brawley who is the
author, among other works, of one of the best handbooks on the English
drama that has yet appeared in America.

But the group of the new Negro poets, whose work makes up the bulk of this
anthology, contains names destined to be known. Claude McKay, although
still quite a young man, has already demonstrated his power, breadth and
skill as a poet. Mr. McKay's breadth is as essential a part of his
equipment as his power and skill. He demonstrates mastery of the three
when as a Negro poet he pours out the bitterness and rebellion in his
heart in those two sonnet-tragedies, "If We Must Die" and "To the White
Fiends," in a manner that strikes terror; and when as a cosmic poet he
creates the atmosphere and mood of poetic beauty in the absolute, as he
does in "Spring in New Hampshire" and "The Harlem Dancer." Mr. McKay gives
evidence that he has passed beyond the danger which threatens many of the
new Negro poets--the danger of allowing the purely polemical phases of the
race problem to choke their sense of artistry.

Mr. McKay's earliest work is unknown in this country. It consists of poems
written and published in his native Jamaica. I was fortunate enough to run
across this first volume, and I could not refrain from reproducing here
one of the poems written in the West Indian Negro dialect. I have done
this not only to illustrate the widest range of the poet's talent and to
offer a comparison between the American and the West Indian dialects, but
on account of the intrinsic worth of the poem itself. I was much tempted
to introduce several more, in spite of the fact that they might require a
glossary, because however greater work Mr. McKay may do he can never do
anything more touching and charming than these poems in the Jamaica
dialect.

Fenton Johnson is a young poet of the ultra-modern school who gives
promise of greater work than he has yet done. Jessie Fauset shows that she
possesses the lyric gift, and she works with care and finish. Miss Fauset
is especially adept in her translations from the French. Georgia Douglas
Johnson is a poet neither afraid nor ashamed of her emotions. She limits
herself to the purely conventional forms, rhythms and rhymes, but through
them she achieves striking effects. The principal theme of Mrs. Johnson's
poems is the secret dread down in every woman's heart, the dread of the
passing of youth and beauty, and with them love. An old theme, one which
poets themselves have often wearied of, but which, like death, remains one
of the imperishable themes on which is made the poetry that has moved
men's hearts through all ages. In her ingenuously wrought verses, through
sheer simplicity and spontaneousness, Mrs. Johnson often sounds a note of
pathos or passion that will not fail to waken a response, except in those
too sophisticated or cynical to respond to natural impulses. Of the half
dozen or so of colored women writing creditable verse, Anne Spencer is the
most modern and least obvious in her methods. Her lines are at times
involved and turgid and almost cryptic, but she shows an originality which
does not depend upon eccentricities. In her "Before the Feast of Shushan"
she displays an opulence, the love of which has long been charged against
the Negro as one of his naive and childish traits, but which in art may
infuse a much needed color, warmth and spirit of abandon into American
poetry.

John W. Holloway, more than any Negro poet writing in the dialect to-day,
summons to his work the lilt, the spontaneity and charm of which Dunbar
was the supreme master whenever he employed that medium. It is well to say
a word here about the dialect poems of James Edwin Campbell. In dialect,
Campbell was a precursor of Dunbar. A comparison of his idioms and
phonetics with those of Dunbar reveals great differences. Dunbar is a
shade or two more sophisticated and his phonetics approach nearer to a
mean standard of the dialects spoken in the different sections. Campbell
is more primitive and his phonetics are those of the dialect as spoken by
the Negroes of the sea islands off the coasts of South Carolina and
Georgia, which to this day remains comparatively close to its African
roots, and is strikingly similar to the speech of the uneducated Negroes
of the West Indies. An error that confuses many persons in reading or
understanding Negro dialect is the idea that it is uniform. An ignorant
Negro of the uplands of Georgia would have almost as much difficulty in
understanding an ignorant sea island Negro as an Englishman would have.
Not even in the dialect of any particular section is a given word always
pronounced in precisely the same way. Its pronunciation depends upon the
preceding and following sounds. Sometimes the combination permits of a
liaison so close that to the uninitiated the sound of the word is almost
completely lost.

The constant effort in Negro dialect is to elide all troublesome
consonants and sounds. This negative effort may be after all only positive
laziness of the vocal organs, but the result is a softening and smoothing
which makes Negro dialect so delightfully easy for singers.

Daniel Webster Davis wrote dialect poetry at the time when Dunbar was
writing. He gained great popularity, but it did not spread beyond his own
race. Davis had unctuous humor, but he was crude. For illustration, note
the vast stretch between his "Hog Meat" and Dunbar's "When de Co'n Pone's
Hot," both of them poems on the traditional ecstasy of the Negro in
contemplation of "good things" to eat.

It is regrettable that two of the most gifted writers included were cut
off so early in life. R. C. Jamison and Joseph S. Cotter, Jr., died
several years ago, both of them in their youth. Jamison was barely thirty
at the time of his death, but among his poems there is one, at least,
which stamps him as a poet of superior talent and lofty inspiration. "The
Negro Soldiers" is a poem with the race problem as its theme, yet it
transcends the limits of race and rises to a spiritual height that makes
it one of the noblest poems of the Great War. Cotter died a mere boy of
twenty, and the latter part of that brief period he passed in an invalid
state. Some months before his death he published a thin volume of verses
which were for the most part written on a sick bed. In this little volume
Cotter showed fine poetic sense and a free and bold mastery over his
material. A reading of Cotter's poems is certain to induce that mood in
which one will regretfully speculate on what the young poet might have
accomplished had he not been cut off so soon.

As intimated above, my original idea for this book underwent a change in
the writing of the introduction. I first planned to select twenty-five to
thirty poems which I judged to be up to a certain standard, and offer them
with a few words of introduction and without comment. In the collection,
as it grew to be, that "certain standard" has been broadened if not
lowered; but I believe that this is offset by the advantage of the wider
range given the reader and the student of the subject.

I offer this collection without making apology or asking allowance. I feel
confident that the reader will find not only an earnest for the future,
but actual achievement. The reader cannot but be impressed by the distance
already covered. It is a long way from the plaints of George Horton to the
invectives of Claude McKay, from the obviousness of Frances Harper to the
complexness of Anne Spencer. Much ground has been covered, but more will
yet be covered. It is this side of prophecy to declare that the undeniable
creative genius of the Negro is destined to make a distinctive and
valuable contribution to American poetry.

I wish to extend my thanks to Mr. Arthur A. Schomburg, who placed his
valuable collection of books by Negro authors at my disposal. I wish also
to acknowledge with thanks the kindness of Dodd, Mead & Co. for permitting
the reprint of poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar; of the Cornhill Publishing
Company for permission to reprint poems of Georgia Douglas Johnson, Joseph
S. Cotter, Jr., Bertram Johnson and Waverley Carmichael; and of Neale &
Co. for permission to reprint poems of John W. Holloway. I wish to thank
Mr. Braithwaite for permission to use the included poems from his
forthcoming volume, "Sandy Star and Willie Gee." And to acknowledge the
courtesy of the following magazines: _The Crisis, The Century Magazine,
The Liberator, The Freeman, The Independent, Others_, and _Poetry: A
Magazine of Verse_.

James Weldon Johnson.
New York City, 1921.




THE BOOK OF AMERICAN NEGRO POETRY




    Paul Laurence Dunbar


A NEGRO LOVE SONG[1]

Seen my lady home las' night,
  Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hel' huh han' an' sque'z it tight,
  Jump back, honey, jump back.
Hyeahd huh sigh a little sigh,
Seen a light gleam f'om huh eye,
An' a smile go flittin' by--
  Jump back, honey, jump back.

Hyeahd de win' blow thoo de pine,
  Jump back, honey, jump back.
Mockin'-bird was singin' fine,
  Jump back, honey, jump back.
An' my hea't was beatin' so,
When I reached my lady's do',
Dat I could n't ba' to go--
  Jump back, honey, jump back.

Put my ahm aroun' huh wais',
  Jump back, honey, jump back.
Raised huh lips an' took a tase,
  Jump back, honey, jump back.
Love me, honey, love me true?
Love me well ez I love you?
An' she answe'd, "Cose I do"--
  Jump back, honey, jump back.

[Footnote 1: Copyright by Dodd, Mead & Company.]


LITTLE BROWN BABY

Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes,
  Come to yo' pappy an' set on his knee.
What you been doin', suh--makin' san' pies?
  Look at dat bib--You's ez du'ty ez me.
Look at dat mouf--dat's merlasses, I bet;
  Come hyeah, Maria, an' wipe off his han's.
Bees gwine to ketch you an' eat you up yit,
  Bein' so sticky an' sweet--goodness lan's!

Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes
  Who's pappy's darlin' an' who's pappy's chile?
Who is it all de day nevah once tries
  Fu' to be cross, er once loses dat smile?
Whah did you git dem teef? My, you's a scamp!
  Whah did dat dimple come f'om in yo' chin?
Pappy do' know you--I b'lieves you's a tramp;
  Mammy, dis hyeah's some ol' straggler got in!

Let's th'ow him outen de do' in de san',
  We do' want stragglers a-layin' 'roun' hyeah;
Let's gin him 'way to de big buggah-man;
  I know he's hidin' erroun' hyeah right neah.
Buggah-man, buggah-man, come in de do',
  Hyeah's a bad boy you kin have fu' to eat.
Mammy an' pappy do' want him no mo',
  Swaller him down f'om his haid to his feet!

Dah, now, I t'ought dat you'd hug me up close.
  Go back, ol' buggah, you sha'n't have dis boy.
He ain't no tramp, ner no straggler, of co'se;
  He's pappy's pa'dner an' playmate an' joy.
Come to you' pallet now--go to you' res';
  Wisht you could allus know ease an' cleah skies;
Wisht you could stay jes' a chile on my breas'--
  Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes!


SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT

Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing;
  I look far out into the pregnant night,
Where I can hear a solemn booming gun
  And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing.

My tearful eyes my soul's deep hurt are glassing;
  For I would hail and check that ship of ships.
I stretch my hands imploring, cry aloud,
  My voice falls dead a foot from mine own lips,
And but its ghost doth reach that vessel, passing, passing.

O Earth, O Sky, O Ocean, both surpassing,
  O heart of mine, O soul that dreads the dark!
Is there no hope for me? Is there no way
  That I may sight and check that speeding bark
Which out of sight and sound is passing, passing?


LOVER'S LANE

Summah night an' sighin' breeze,
  'Long de lovah's lane;
Frien'ly, shadder-mekin' trees,
  'Long de lovah's lane.
White folks' wo'k all done up gran'--
Me an' 'Mandy han'-in-han'
Struttin' lak we owned de lan',
  'Long de lovah's lane.

Owl a-settin' 'side de road,
  'Long de lovah's lane,
Lookin' at us lak he knowed
  Dis uz lovah's lane.
Go on, hoot yo' Mou'nful tune,
You ain' nevah loved in June,
An' come hidin' f'om de moon
  Down in lovah's lane.

Bush it ben' an' nod an' sway,
  Down in lovah's lane,
Try'n' to hyeah me whut I say
  'Long de lovah's lane.
But I whispahs low lak dis,
An' my 'Mandy smile huh bliss--
Mistah Bush he shek his fis',
  Down in lovah's lane.

Whut I keer ef day is long,
  Down in lovah's lane.
I kin allus sing a song
  'Long de lovah's lane.
An' de wo'ds I hyeah an' say
Meks up fu' de weary day
Wen I's strollin' by de way,
  Down in lovah's lane.

An' dis t'ought will allus rise
  Down in lovah's lane;
Wondah whethah in de skies
  Dey's a lovah's lane.
Ef dey ain't, I tell you true,
'Ligion do look mighty blue,
'Cause I do' know whut I'd do
  'Dout a lovah's lane.


THE DEBT

This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief.
Sorrow without relief.

Pay it I will to the end--
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release--
Gives me the clasp of peace.

Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best--
God! but the interest!


THE HAUNTED OAK

Pray why are you so bare, so bare,
  Oh, bough of the old oak-tree;
And why, when I go through the shade you throw,
  Runs a shudder over me?

My leaves were green as the best, I trow,
  And sap ran free in my veins,
But I saw in the moonlight dim and weird
  A guiltless victim's pains.

I bent me down to hear his sigh;
  I shook with his gurgling moan,
And I trembled sore when they rode away,
  And left him here alone.

They'd charged him with the old, old crime,
  And set him fast in jail:
Oh, why does the dog howl all night long,
  And why does the night wind wail?

He prayed his prayer and he swore his oath,
  And he raised his hand to the sky;
But the beat of hoofs smote on his ear,
  And the steady tread drew nigh.

Who is it rides by night, by night,
  Over the moonlit road?
And what is the spur that keeps the pace,
  What is the galling goad?

And now they beat at the prison door,
  "Ho, keeper, do not stay!
We are friends of him whom you hold within,
  And we fain would take him away

From those who ride fast on our heels
  With mind to do him wrong;
They have no care for his innocence,
  And the rope they bear is long."

They have fooled the jailer with lying words,
  They have fooled the man with lies;
The bolts unbar, the locks are drawn,
  And the great door open flies.

Now they have taken him from the jail,
  And hard and fast they ride,
And the leader laughs low down in his throat,
  As they halt my trunk beside.

Oh, the judge, he wore a mask of black,
  And the doctor one of white,
And the minister, with his oldest son,
  Was curiously bedight.

Oh, foolish man, why weep you now?
  'Tis but a little space,
And the time will come when these shall dread
  The mem'ry of your face.

I feel the rope against my bark,
  And the weight of him in my grain,
I feel in the throe of his final woe
  The touch of my own last pain.

And never more shall leaves come forth
  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 ever the judge rides by, rides by,
  And goes to hunt the deer,
And ever another rides his soul
  In the guise of a mortal fear.

And ever the man he rides me hard,
  And never a night stays he;
For I feel his curse as a haunted bough
  On the trunk of a haunted tree.


WHEN DE CO'N PONE'S HOT

Dey is times in life when Nature
  Seems to slip a cog an' go,
Jes' a-rattlin' down creation,
  Lak an ocean's overflow;
When de worl' jes' stahts a-spinnin'
  Lak a picaninny's top,
An' yo' cup o' joy is brimmin'
  'Twell it seems about to slop,
An' you feel jes' lak a racah,
  Dat is trainin' fu' to trot--
When yo' mammy says de blessin'
  An' de co'n pone's hot.

When you set down at de table,
  Kin' o' weary lak an' sad,
An' you'se jes' a little tiahed
  An' purhaps a little mad;
How yo' gloom tu'ns into gladness,
  How yo' joy drives out de doubt
When de oven do' is opened,
  An' de smell comes po'in' out;
Why, de 'lectric light o' Heaven
  Seems to settle on de spot,
When yo' mammy says de blessin'
  An' de co'n pone's hot.

When de cabbage pot is steamin'
  An' de bacon good an' fat,
When de chittlins is a-sputter'n'
  So's to show you whah dey's at;
Tek away yo' sody biscuit,
  Tek away yo' cake an' pie,
Fu' de glory time is comin',
  An' it's 'proachin' mighty nigh,
An' you want to jump an' hollah,
  Dough you know you'd bettah not,
When yo' mammy says de blessin'
  An' de co'n pone's hot.

I have hyeahd o' lots o' sermons,
  An' I've hyeahd o' lots o' prayers,
An' I've listened to some singin'
  Dat has tuck me up de stairs
Of de Glory-Lan' an' set me
  Jes' below de Mastah's th'one,
An' have lef my hea't a-singin'
  In a happy aftah tone;
But dem wu'ds so sweetly murmured
  Seem to tech de softes' spot,
When my mammy says de blessin',
  An' de co'n pone's hot.


A DEATH SONG

Lay me down beneaf de willers in de grass,
Whah de branch'll go a-singin' as it pass
  An' w'en I's a-layin' low,
  I kin hyeah it as it go
Singin', "Sleep, my honey, tek yo' res' at las'."

Lay me nigh to whah hit meks a little pool,
An' de watah stan's so quiet lak an' cool,
  Whah de little birds in spring,
  Ust to come an' drink an' sing,
An' de chillen waded on dey way to school.

Let me settle w'en my shouldahs draps dey load
Nigh enough to hyeah de noises in de road;
  Fu' I t'ink de las' long res'
  Gwine to soothe my sperrit bes'
If I's layin' 'mong de t'ings I's allus knowed.




    James Edwin Campbell


NEGRO SERENADE

O, de light-bugs glimmer down de lane,
  Merlindy! Merlindy!
O, de whip'-will callin' notes ur pain--
  Merlindy, O, Merlindy!
O, honey lub, my turkle dub,
  Doan' you hyuh my bawnjer ringin',
While de night-dew falls an' de ho'n owl calls
  By de ol' ba'n gate Ise singin'.

O, Miss 'Lindy, doan' you hyuh me, chil',
  Merlindy! Merlindy!
My lub fur you des dribe me wil'--
  Merlindy, O, Merlindy!
I'll sing dis night twel broad day-light,
  Ur bu's' my froat wid tryin',
'Less you come down, Miss 'Lindy Brown,
  An' stops dis ha't f'um sighin'!


DE CUNJAH MAN

O chillen, run, de Cunjah man,
Him mouf ez beeg ez fryin' pan,
Him yurs am small, him eyes am raid,
Him hab no toof een him ol' haid,
Him hab him roots, him wu'k him trick,
Him roll him eye, him mek you sick--
  De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man,
  O chillen, run, de Cunjah man!

Him hab ur ball ob raid, raid ha'r,
Him hide it un' de kitchen sta'r,
Mam Jude huh pars urlong dat way,
An' now huh hab ur snaik, de say.
Him wrop ur roun' huh buddy tight,
Huh eyes pop out, ur orful sight--
  De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man,
  O chillen, run, de Cunjah man!

Miss Jane, huh dribe him f'um huh do',
An' now huh hens woan' lay no mo';
De Jussey cow huh done fall sick,
Hit all done by de Cunjah trick.
Him put ur root un' 'Lijah's baid,
An' now de man he sho' am daid--
  De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man,
  O chillen, run, de Cunjah man!

Me see him stan' de yudder night
Right een de road een white moon-light;
Him toss him arms, him whirl him 'roun',
Him stomp him foot urpon de groun';
De snaiks come crawlin', one by one,
Me hyuh um hiss, me break an' run--
  De Cunjah man, de Cunjah man,
  O chillen, run, de Cunjah man!


UNCLE EPH'S BANJO SONG

Clean de ba'n an' sweep de flo',
   Sing, my bawnjer, sing!
We's gwine ter dawnce dis eb'nin' sho',
  Ring, my bawnjer, ring!
Den hits up de road an' down de lane,
Hurry, niggah, you miss de train;
De yaller gal she dawnce so neat,
De yaller gal she look so sweet,
  Ring, my bawnjer, ring!

De moon come up, de sun go down,
  Sing, my bawnjer, sing!
De niggahs am all come f'um town,
  Ring, my bawnjer, ring!
Den hits roun' de hill an' froo de fiel'--
Lookout dar, niggah, doan' you steal!
De milyuns on dem vines am green,
De moon am bright, O you'll be seen,
  Ring, my bawnjer, ring!


OL' DOC' HYAR

Ur ol' Hyar lib in ur house on de hill,
He hunner yurs ol' an' nebber wuz ill;
He yurs dee so long an' he eyes so beeg,
An' he laigs so spry dat he dawnce ur jeeg;
He lib so long dat he know ebbry tings
'Bout de beas'ses dat walks an' de bu'ds dat sings--
                        Dis Ol' Doc' Hyar,
                        Whar lib up dar
Een ur mighty fine house on ur mighty high hill.

He doctah fur all de beas'ses an' bu'ds--
He put on he specs an' he use beeg wu'ds,
He feel dee pu's' den he look mighty wise,
He pull out he watch an' he shet bofe eyes;
He grab up he hat an' grab up he cane,
Den--"blam!" go de do'--he gone lak de train,
                        Dis Ol' Doc' Hyar,
                        Whar lib up dar
Een ur mighty fine house on ur mighty high hill.

Mistah Ba'r fall sick--dee sont fur Doc' Hyar,
"O, Doctah, come queeck, an' see Mr. B'ar;
He mighty nigh daid des sho' ez you b'on!"
"Too much ur young peeg, too much ur green co'n,"
Ez he put on he hat, said Ol' Doc' Hyar;
"I'll tek 'long meh lawnce, an' lawnce Mistah B'ar,"
                        Said Ol' Doc' Hyar,
                        Whar lib up dar
Een ur mighty fine house on ur mighty high hill.

Mistah B'ar he groaned, Mistah B'ar he growled,
W'ile de ol' Miss B'ar an' de chillen howled;
Doctah Hyar tuk out he sha'p li'l lawnce,
An' pyu'ced Mistah B'ar twel he med him prawnce
Den grab up he hat an' grab up he cane
"Blam!" go de do' an' he gone lak de train,
                        Dis Ol' Doc' Hyar,
                        Whar lib up dar
Een ur mighty fine house on ur mighty high hill.

But de vay naix day Mistah B'ar he daid;
Wen dee tell Doc' Hyar, he des scratch he haid:
"Ef pahsons git well ur pahsons git wu's,
Money got ter come een de Ol' Hyar's pu's;
Not wut folkses does, but fur wut dee know
Does de folkses git paid"--an' Hyar larfed low,
                        Dis Ol' Doc' Hyar,
                        Whar lib up dar
Een de mighty fine house on de mighty high hill!


WHEN OL' SIS' JUDY PRAY

When ol' Sis' Judy pray,
De teahs come stealin' down my cheek,
De voice ur God widin me speak';
I see myse'f so po' an' weak,
Down on my knees de cross I seek,
When ol' Sis' Judy pray.

When ol' Sis' Judy pray,
De thun'ers ur Mount Sin-a-i
Comes rushin' down f'um up on high--
De Debbil tu'n his back an' fly
While sinnahs loud fur pa'don cry,
When ol' Sis' Judy pray.

When ol' Sis' Judy pray,
Ha'd sinnahs trimble in dey seat
Ter hyuh huh voice in sorro 'peat;
(While all de chu'ch des sob an' weep)
"O Shepa'd, dese, dy po' los' sheep!"
When ol' Sis' Judy pray.

When ol' Sis' Judy pray,
De whole house hit des rock an' moan
Ter see huh teahs an' hyuh huh groan;
Dar's somepin' in Sis' Judy's tone
Dat melt all ha'ts dough med ur stone
When ol' Sis' Judy pray.

When ol' Sis' Judy pray,
Salvation's light comes pourin' down--
Hit fill de chu'ch an' all de town--
Why, angels' robes go rustlin' 'roun',
An' hebben on de Yurf am foun',
When ol' Sis' Judy pray.

When ol' Sis' Judy pray,
My soul go sweepin' up on wings,
An' loud de chu'ch wid "Glory!" rings,
An' wide de gates ur Jahsper swings
Twel you hyuh ha'ps wid golding strings,
When ol' Sis' Judy pray.


COMPENSATION

O, rich young lord, thou ridest by
With looks of high disdain;
It chafes me not thy title high,
Thy blood of oldest strain.
The lady riding at thy side
Is but in name thy promised bride,
  Ride on, young lord, ride on!

Her father wills and she obeys,
The custom of her class;
'Tis Land not Love the trothing sways--
For Land he sells his lass.
Her fair white hand, young lord, is thine,
Her _soul_, proud fool, her _soul_ is mine,
  Ride on, young lord, ride on!

No title high my father bore;
The tenant of thy farm,
He left me what I value more:
Clean heart, clear brain, strong arm
And love for bird and beast and bee
And song of lark and hymn of sea,
  Ride on, young lord, ride on!

The boundless sky to me belongs,
The paltry acres thine;
The painted beauty sings thy songs,
The lavrock lilts me mine;
The hot-housed orchid blooms for thee,
The gorse and heather bloom for me,
  Ride on, young lord, ride on!




    James D. Corrothers


AT THE CLOSED GATE OF JUSTICE

To be a Negro in a day like this
  Demands forgiveness. Bruised with blow on blow,
Betrayed, like him whose woe dimmed eyes gave bliss
  Still must one succor those who brought one low,
To be a Negro in a day like this.

To be a Negro in a day like this
  Demands rare patience--patience that can wait
In utter darkness. 'Tis the path to miss,
  And knock, unheeded, at an iron gate,
To be a Negro in a day like this.

To be a Negro in a day like this
  Demands strange loyalty. We serve a flag
Which is to us white freedom's emphasis.
  Ah! one must love when Truth and Justice lag,
To be a Negro in a day like this.

To be a Negro in a day like this--
  Alas! Lord God, what evil have we done?
Still shines the gate, all gold and amethyst,
  But I pass by, the glorious goal unwon,
"Merely a Negro"--in a day like this!


PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

He came, a youth, singing in the dawn
  Of a new freedom, glowing o'er his lyre,
  Refining, as with great Apollo's fire,
  His people's gift of song. And thereupon,
This Negro singer, come to Helicon
  Constrained the masters, listening to admire,
  And roused a race to wonder and aspire,
  Gazing which way their honest voice was gone,
With ebon face uplit of glory's crest.
  Men marveled at the singer, strong and sweet,
  Who brought the cabin's mirth, the tuneful night,
But faced the morning, beautiful with light,
  To die while shadows yet fell toward the west,
  And leave his laurels at his people's feet.

Dunbar, no poet wears your laurels now;
  None rises, singing, from your race like you.
  Dark melodist, immortal, though the dew
  Fell early on the bays upon your brow,
And tinged with pathos every halcyon vow
  And brave endeavor. Silence o'er you threw
  Flowerets of love. Or, if an envious few
  Of your own people brought no garlands, how
Could Malice smite him whom the gods had crowned?
  If, like the meadow-lark, your flight was low
  Your flooded lyrics half the hilltops drowned;
A wide world heard you, and it loved you so
  It stilled its heart to list the strains you sang,
  And o'er your happy songs its plaudits rang.


THE NEGRO SINGER

O'er all my song the image of a face
  Lieth, like shadow on the wild sweet flowers.
  The dream, the ecstasy that prompts my powers;
  The golden lyre's delights bring little grace
To bless the singer of a lowly race.
  Long hath this mocked me: aye in marvelous hours,
  When Hera's gardens gleamed, or Cynthia's bowers,
  Or Hope's red pylons, in their far, hushed place!
But I shall dig me deeper to the gold;
  Fetch water, dripping, over desert miles,
  From clear Nyanzas and mysterious Niles
Of love; and sing, nor one kind act withhold.
  So shall men know me, and remember long,
  Nor my dark face dishonor any song.


THE ROAD TO THE BOW

Ever and ever anon,
  After the black storm, the eternal, beauteous bow!
Brother, to rosy-painted mists that arch beyond,
  Blithely I go.

My brows men laureled and my lyre
  Twined with immortal ivy for one little rippling song;
My "House of Golden Leaves" they praised and "passionate fire"--
  But, Friend, the way is long!

Onward and onward, up! away!
  Though Fear flaunt all his banners in my face,
And my feet stumble, lo! the Orphean Day!
  Forward by God's grace!

These signs are still before me: "Fear,"
  "Danger," "Unprecedented," and I hear black "No"
Still thundering, and "Churl." Good Friend, I rest me here--
  Then to the glittering bow!

Loometh and cometh Hate in wrath,
  Mailed Wrong, swart Servitude and Shame with bitter rue,
Nathless a Negro poet's feet must tread the path
  The winged god knew.

Thus, my true Brother, dream-led, I
 Forefend the anathema, following the span.
I hold my head as proudly high
 As any man.


IN THE MATTER OF TWO MEN

One does such work as one will not,
  And well each knows the right;
Though the white storm howls, or the sun is hot,
  The black must serve the white.
And it's, oh, for the white man's softening flesh,
  While the black man's muscles grow!
Well I know which grows the mightier,
  _I_ know; full well I know.

The white man seeks the soft, fat place,
  And he moves and he works by rule.
Ingenious grows the humbler race
  In Oppression's prodding school.
And it's, oh, for a white man gone to seed,
  While the Negro struggles so!
And I know which race develops most,
  I know; yes, well I know.

The white man rides in a palace car,
  And the Negro rides "Jim Crow."
To damn the other with bolt and bar,
  One creepeth so low; so low!
And it's, oh, for a master's nose in the mire,
  While the humbled hearts o'erflow!
Well I know whose soul grows big at this,
  And whose grows small; _I know_!

The white man leases out his land,
  And the Negro tills the same.
One works; one loafs and takes command;
  But I know who wins the game!
And it's, oh, for the white man's shrinking soil,
  As the black's rich acres grow!
Well I know how the signs point out at last,
  I know; ah, well I know!

The white man votes for his color's sake,
  While the black, for his is barred;
(Though "ignorance" is the charge they make),
  But the black man studies hard.
And it's, oh, for the white man's sad neglect,
  For the power of his light let go!
So, I know which man must win at last,
  I know! Ah, Friend, I know!


AN INDIGNATION DINNER

Dey was hard times jes fo' Christmas round our neighborhood one year;
So we held a secret meetin', whah de white folks couldn't hear,
To 'scuss de situation, an' to see what could be done
Towa'd a fust-class Christmas dinneh an' a little Christmas fun.

Rufus Green, who called de meetin', ris an' said: "In dis here town,
An' throughout de land, de white folks is a-tryin' to keep us down."
S' 'e: "Dey's bought us, sold us, beat us; now dey 'buse us 'ca'se we's
free;
But when dey tetch my stomach, dey's done gone too fur foh me!

"Is I right?" "You sho is, Rufus!" roared a dozen hungry throats.
"Ef you'd keep a mule a-wo'kin', don't you tamper wid his oats.
Dat's sense," continued Rufus. "But dese white folks nowadays
Has done got so close and stingy you can't live on what dey pays.

"Here 'tis Christmas-time, an', folkses, I's indignant 'nough to choke.
Whah's our Christmas dinneh comin' when we's 'mos' completely broke?
I can't hahdly 'fo'd a toothpick an' a glass o' water. Mad?
Say, I'm desp'ret! Dey jes better treat me nice, dese white folks had!"

Well, dey 'bused de white folks scan'lous, till old Pappy Simmons ris,
Leanin' on his cane to s'pote him, on account his rheumatis',
An' s' 'e: "Chilun, whut's dat wintry wind a-sighin' th'ough de street
'Bout yo' wasted summeh wages? But, no matter, we mus' eat.

"Now, I seed a beau'ful tuhkey on a certain gemmun's fahm.
He's a-growin' fat an' sassy, an' a-struttin' to a chahm.
Chickens, sheeps, hogs, sweet pertaters--all de craps is fine dis year;
All we needs is a committee foh to tote de goodies here."

Well, we lit right in an' voted dat it was a gran idee,
An' de dinneh we had Christmas was worth trabblin' miles to see;
An' we eat a full an' plenty, big an' little, great an' small,
Not beca'se we was dishonest, but indignant, sah. Dat's all.


DREAM AND THE SONG

So oft our hearts, beloved lute,
In blossomy haunts of song are mute;
So long we pore, 'mid murmurings dull,
O'er loveliness unutterable.
So vain is all our passion strong!
The dream is lovelier than the song.

The rose thought, touched by words, doth turn
Wan ashes. Still, from memory's urn,
The lingering blossoms tenderly
Refute our wilding minstrelsy.
Alas! we work but beauty's wrong!
The dream is lovelier than the song.

Yearned Shelley o'er the golden flame?
Left Keats for beauty's lure, a name
But "writ in water"? Woe is me!
To grieve o'er flowerful faery.
My Phasian doves are flown so long--
The dream is lovelier than the song!

Ah, though we build a bower of dawn,
The golden-winged bird is gone,
And morn may gild, through shimmering leaves,
Only the swallow-twittering eaves.
What art may house or gold prolong
A dream far lovelier than a song?

The lilting witchery, the unrest
Of winged dreams, is in our breast;
But ever dear Fulfilment's eyes
Gaze otherward. The long-sought prize,
My lute, must to the gods belong.
The dream is lovelier than the song.




    Daniel Webster Davis


'WEH DOWN SOUF

O, de birds ar' sweetly singin',
  'Weh down Souf,
An' de banjer is a-ringin',
  'Weh down Souf;
An' my heart it is a-sighin',
Whil' de moments am a-flyin',
Fur my hom' I am a-cryin',
  'Weh down Souf.

Dar de pickaninnies 's playin',
  'Weh down Souf,
An' fur dem I am a-prayin',
  'Weh down Souf;
An' when I gits sum munny,
Yo' kin bet I'm goin', my hunny,
Fur de lan' dat am so sunny,
  'Weh down Souf.

Whil' de win' up here's a-blowin',
  'Weh down Souf
De corn is sweetly growin',
  'Weh down Souf.
Dey tells me here ub freedum,
But I ain't a-gwine to heed um,
But I'se gwine fur to lebe um,
  Fur 'weh down Souf.

I bin up here a-wuckin',
  From 'weh down Souf,
An' I ain't a bin a-shurkin'--
  I'm frum 'weh down Souf;
But I'm gittin' mighty werry,
An' de days a-gittin' drerry,
An' I'm hongry, O, so berry,
  Fur my hom' down Souf.

O, de moon dar shines de brighter,
  'Weh down Souf,
An' I know my heart is lighter,
  'Weh down Souf;
An' de berry thought brings pledjur,
I'll be happy dar 'dout medjur,
Fur dar I hab my tredjur,
  'Weh down Souf.


HOG MEAT

Deze eatin' folks may tell me ub de gloriz ub spring lam',
An' de toofsumnis ub tuckey et wid cel'ry an' wid jam;
Ub beef-st'ak fried wid unyuns, an' sezoned up so fine--
But you' jes' kin gimme hog-meat, an' I'm happy all de time.

When de fros' is on de pun'kin an' de sno'-flakes in de ar',
I den begin rejoicin'--hog-killin' time is near;
An' de vizhuns ub de fucher den fill my nightly dreams,
Fur de time is fas' a-comin' fur de 'lishus pork an' beans.

We folks dat's frum de kuntry may be behin' de sun--
We don't like city eatin's, wid beefsteaks dat ain' done--
'Dough mutton chops is splendid, an' dem veal cutlits fine,
To me 'tain't like a sphar-rib, or gret big chunk ub chine.

Jes' talk to me 'bout hog-meat, ef yo' want to see me pleased,
Fur biled wid beans tiz gor'jus, or made in hog-head cheese;
An' I could jes' be happy, 'dout money, cloze or house,
Wid plenty yurz an' pig feet made in ol'-fashun "souse."

I 'fess I'm only humun, I hab my joys an' cares--
Sum days de clouds hang hebby, sum days de skies ar' fair;
But I forgib my in'miz, my heart is free frum hate,
When my bread is filled wid cracklins an' dar's chidlins on my plate.

'Dough 'possum meat is glo'yus wid 'taters in de pan,
But put 'longside pork sassage it takes a backward stan';
Ub all yer fancy eatin's, jes gib to me fur mine
Sum souse or pork or chidlins, sum sphar-rib, or de chine.




    William H.A. Moore


DUSK SONG

The garden is very quiet to-night,
The dusk has gone with the Evening Star,
And out on the bay a lone ship light
Makes a silver pathway over the bar
Where the sea sings low.

I follow the light with an earnest eye,
Creeping along to the thick far-away,
Until it fell in the depths of the deep, dark sky
With the haunting dream of the dusk of day
And its lovely glow.

Long nights, long nights and the whisperings of new ones,
Flame the line of the pathway down to the sea
With the halo of new dreams and the hallow of old ones,
And they bring magic light to my love reverie
And a lover's regret.

Tender sorrow for loss of a soft murmured word,
Tender measure of doubt in a faint, aching heart,
Tender listening for wind-songs in the tree heights heard
When you and I were of the dusks a part,
Are with me yet.

I pray for faith to the noble spirit of Space,
I sound the cosmic depths for the measure of glory
Which will bring to this earth the imperishable race
Of whom Beauty dreamed in the soul-toned story
The Prophets told.

Silence and love and deep wonder of stars
Dust-silver the heavens from west to east,
From south to north, and in a maze of bars
Invisible I wander far from the feast
As night grows old.

Half blind is my vision I know to the truth,
My ears are half deaf to the voice of the tear
That touches the silences as Autumn's ruth
Steals thru the dusks of each returning year
A goodly friend.

The Autumn, then Winter and wintertime's grief!
But the weight of the snow is the glistening gift
Which loving brings to the rose and its leaf,
For the days of the roses glow in the drift
And never end.

       *       *       *       *       *

The moon has come. Wan and pallid is she.
The spell of half memories, the touch of half tears,
And the wounds of worn passions she brings to me
With all the tremor of the far-off years
And their mad wrong.

Yet the garden is very quiet to-night,
The dusk has long gone with the Evening Star,
And out on the bay the moon's wan light
Lays a silver pathway beyond the bar,
Dear heart, pale and long.


IT WAS NOT FATE

It was not fate which overtook me,
Rather a wayward, wilful wind
That blew hot for awhile
And then, as the even shadows came, blew cold.
What pity it is that a man grown old in life's dreaming
Should stop, e'en for a moment, to look into a woman's eyes.
And I forgot!
Forgot that one's heart must be steeled against the east wind.
Life and death alike come out of the East:
Life as tender as young grass,
Death as dreadful as the sight of clotted blood.
I shall go back into the darkness,
Not to dream but to seek the light again.
I shall go by paths, mayhap,
On roads that wind around the foothills
Where the plains are bare and wild
And the passers-by come few and far between.
I want the night to be long, the moon blind,
The hills thick with moving memories,
And my heart beating a breathless requiem
For all the dead days I have lived.
When the Dawn comes--Dawn, deathless, dreaming--
I shall will that my soul must be cleansed of hate,
I shall pray for strength to hold children close to my heart,
I shall desire to build houses where the poor will know shelter, comfort,
beauty.
And then may I look into a woman's eyes
And find holiness, love and the peace which passeth understanding.




    W.E. Burghardt Du Bois


A LITANY OF ATLANTA

Done at Atlanta, in the Day of Death, 1906


O Silent God, Thou whose voice afar in mist and mystery hath left our ears
an-hungered in these fearful days--
  _Hear us, good Lord!_

Listen to us, Thy children: our faces dark with doubt are made a mockery
in Thy sanctuary. With uplifted hands we front Thy heaven, O God, crying:
  _We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_

We are not better than our fellows, Lord, we are but weak and human men.
When our devils do deviltry, curse Thou the doer and the deed: curse them
as we curse them, do to them all and more than ever they have done to
innocence and weakness, to womanhood and home.
  _Have mercy upon us, miserable sinners!_

And yet whose is the deeper guilt? Who made these devils? Who nursed them
in crime and fed them on injustice? Who ravished and debauched their
mothers and their grandmothers? Who bought and sold their crime, and waxed
fat and rich on public iniquity?
  _Thou knowest, good God!_

Is this Thy justice, O Father, that guile be easier than innocence, and
the innocent crucified for the guilt of the untouched guilty?
  _Justice, O judge of men!_

Wherefore do we pray? Is not the God of the fathers dead? Have not seers
seen in Heaven's halls Thine hearsed and lifeless form stark amidst the
black and rolling smoke of sin, where all along bow bitter forms of
endless dead?
  _Awake, Thou that sleepest!_

Thou art not dead, but flown afar, up hills of endless light, thru blazing
corridors of suns, where worlds do swing of good and gentle men, of women
strong and free--far from the cozenage, black hypocrisy and chaste
prostitution of this shameful speck of dust!
  _Turn again, O Lord, leave us not to perish in our sin!_

From lust of body and lust of blood
  _Great God, deliver us!_

From lust of power and lust of gold,
  _Great God, deliver us!_

From the leagued lying of despot and of brute,
  _Great God, deliver us!_

A city lay in travail, God our Lord, and from her loins sprang twin Murder
and Black Hate. Red was the midnight; clang, crack and cry of death and
fury filled the air and trembled underneath the stars when church spires
pointed silently to Thee. And all this was to sate the greed of greedy men
who hide behind the veil of vengeance!
  _Bend us Thine ear, O Lord!_

In the pale, still morning we looked upon the deed. We stopped our ears
and held our leaping hands, but they--did they not wag their heads and
leer and cry with bloody jaws: _Cease from Crime_! The word was
mockery, for thus they train a hundred crimes while we do cure one.
  _Turn again our captivity, O Lord!_

Behold this maimed and broken thing; dear God, it was an humble black man
who toiled and sweat to save a bit from the pittance paid him. They told
him: _Work and Rise_. He worked. Did this man sin? Nay, but some one
told how some one said another did--one whom he had never seen nor known.
Yet for that man's crime this man lieth maimed and murdered, his wife
naked to shame, his children, to poverty and evil.
  _Hear us, O Heavenly Father!_

Doth not this justice of hell stink in Thy nostrils, O God? How long shall
the mounting flood of innocent blood roar in Thine ears and pound in our
hearts for vengeance? Pile the pale frenzy of blood-crazed brutes who do
such deeds high on Thine altar, Jehovah Jireh, and burn it in hell forever
and forever!
  _Forgive us, good Lord; we know not what we say!_

Bewildered we are, and passion-tost, mad with the madness of a mobbed and
mocked and murdered people; straining at the armposts of Thy Throne, we
raise our shackled hands and charge Thee, God, by the bones of our stolen
fathers, by the tears of our dead mothers, by the very blood of Thy
crucified Christ: _What meaneth this?_ Tell us the Plan; give us the
Sign!
  _Keep not thou silence, O God!_

Sit no longer blind, Lord God, deaf to our prayer and dumb to our dumb
suffering. Surely Thou too art not white, O Lord, a pale, bloodless,
heartless thing?
  _Ah! Christ of all the Pities!_

Forgive the thought! Forgive these wild, blasphemous words. Thou art still
the God of our black fathers, and in Thy soul's soul sit some soft
darkenings of the evening, some shadowings of the velvet night.

But whisper--speak--call, great God, for Thy silence is white terror to
our hearts! The way, O God, show us the way and point us the path.

Whither? North is greed and South is blood; within, the coward, and
without, the liar. Whither? To death?
  _Amen! Welcome dark sleep!_

Whither? To life? But not this life, dear God, not this. Let the cup pass
from us, tempt us not beyond our strength, for there is that clamoring and
clawing within, to whose voice we would not listen, yet shudder lest we
must, and it is red, Ah! God! It is a red and awful shape.
  _Selah!_

In yonder East trembles a star.
  _Vengeance is mine; I mill repay, saith the Lord!_

Thy will, O Lord, be done!
  _Kyrie Eleison!_

Lord, we have done these pleading, wavering words.
  _We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_

We bow our heads and hearken soft to the sobbing of women and little
children.
  _We beseech Thee to hear us, good Lord!_

Our voices sink in silence and in night.
  _Hear us, good Lord!_

In night, O God of a godless land!
  _Amen!_

In silence, O Silent God.
  _Selah!_




    George Marion McClellan


DOGWOOD BLOSSOMS

To dreamy languors and the violet mist
  Of early Spring, the deep sequestered vale
Gives first her paling-blue Miamimist,
  Where blithely pours the cuckoo's annual tale
Of Summer promises and tender green,
  Of a new life and beauty yet unseen.
The forest trees have yet a sighing mouth,
  Where dying winds of March their branches swing,
While upward from the dreamy, sunny South,
  A hand invisible leads on the Spring.

His rounds from bloom to bloom the bee begins
  With flying song, and cowslip wine he sups,
Where to the warm and passing southern winds,
  Azaleas gently swing their yellow cups.
Soon everywhere, with glory through and through,
  The fields will spread with every brilliant hue.
But high o'er all the early floral train,
  Where softness all the arching sky resumes,
The dogwood dancing to the winds' refrain,
  In stainless glory spreads its snowy blooms.


A BUTTERFLY IN CHURCH

What dost thou here, thou shining, sinless thing,
With many colored hues and shapely wing?
Why quit the open field and summer air
To flutter here? Thou hast no need of prayer.

'Tis meet that we, who this great structure built,
Should come to be redeemed and washed from guilt,
For we this gilded edifice within
Are come, with erring hearts and stains of sin.

But thou art free from guilt as God on high;
Go, seek the blooming waste and open sky,
And leave us here our secret woes to bear,
Confessionals and agonies of prayer.


THE HILLS OF SEWANEE

Sewanee Hills of dear delight,
  Prompting my dreams that used to be,
I know you are waiting me still to-night
  By the Unika Range of Tennessee.

The blinking stars in endless space,
  The broad moonlight and silvery gleams,
To-night caress your wind-swept face,
  And fold you in a thousand dreams.

Your far outlines, less seen than felt,
  Which wind with hill propensities,
In moonlight dreams I see you melt
  Away in vague immensities.

And, far away, I still can feel
  Your mystery that ever speaks
Of vanished things, as shadows steal
  Across your breast and rugged peaks.

O, dear blue hills, that lie apart,
  And wait so patiently down there,
Your peace takes hold upon my heart
  And makes its burden less to bear.


THE FEET OF JUDAS

Christ washed the feet of Judas!
The dark and evil passions of his soul,
His secret plot, and sordidness complete,
His hate, his purposing, Christ knew the whole,
And still in love he stooped and washed his feet.

Christ washed the feet of Judas!
Yet all his lurking sin was bare to him,
His bargain with the priest, and more than this,
In Olivet, beneath the moonlight dim,
Aforehand knew and felt his treacherous kiss.

Christ washed the feet of Judas!
And so ineffable his love 'twas meet,
That pity fill his great forgiving heart,
And tenderly to wash the traitor's feet,
Who in his Lord had basely sold his part.

Christ washed the feet of Judas!
And thus a girded servant, self-abased,
Taught that no wrong this side the gate of heaven
Was ever too great to wholly be effaced,
And though unasked, in spirit be forgiven.

And so if we have ever felt the wrong
Of Trampled rights, of caste, it matters not,
What e'er the soul has felt or suffered long,
Oh, heart! this one thing should not be forgot:
Christ washed the feet of Judas.




    William Stanley Braithwaite


SANDY STAR AND WILLIE GEE

Sandy Star and Willie Gee,
Count 'em two, you make 'em three:
Pluck the man and boy apart
And you'll see into my heart.


SANDY STAR

I

_Sculptured Worship_

The zones of warmth around his heart,
  No alien airs had crossed;
But he awoke one morn to feel
  The magic numbness of autumnal frost.

His thoughts were a loose skein of threads,
  And tangled emotions, vague and dim;
And sacrificing what he loved
  He lost the dearest part of him.

In sculptured worship now he lives,
  His one desire a prisoned ache;
If he can never melt again
  His very heart will break.

II

_Laughing It Out_

He had a whim and laughed it out
  Upon the exit of a chance;
He floundered in a sea of doubt--
  If life was real--or just romance.

Sometimes upon his brow would come
  A little pucker of defiance;
He totalled in a word the sum
  Of all man made of facts and science.

And then a hearty laugh would break,
  A reassuring shrug of shoulder;
And we would from his fancy take
  A faith in death which made life bolder.

III

_Exit_

No, his exit by the gate
  Will not leave the wind ajar;
He will go when it is late
  With a misty star.

One will call, he cannot see;
  One will call, he will not hear;
He will take no company
  Nor a hope or fear.

We shall smile who loved him so--
  They who gave him hate will weep;
But for us the winds will blow
  Pulsing through his sleep.

IV

_The Way_

He could not tell the way he came,
  Because his chart was lost:
Yet all his way was paved with flame
  From the bourne he crossed.

He did not know the way to go,
  Because he had no map:
He followed where the winds blow,--
  And the April sap.

He never knew upon his brow
  The secret that he bore,--
And laughs away the mystery now
  The dark's at his door.

V

_Onus Probandi_

No more from out the sunset,
  No more across the foam,
No more across the windy hills
  Will Sandy Star come home.

He went away to search it
  With a curse upon his tongue:
And in his hand the staff of life,
  Made music as it swung.

I wonder if he found it,
  And knows the mystery now--
Our Sandy Star who went away,
  With the secret on his brow.


DEL CASCAR

Del Cascar, Del Cascar,
Stood upon a flaming star,
Stood, and let his feet hang down
Till in China the toes turned brown.

And he reached his fingers over
The rim of the sea, like sails from Dover,
And caught a Mandarin at prayer,
And tickled his nose in Orion's hair.

The sun went down through crimson bars,
And left his blind face battered with stars--
But the brown toes in China kept
Hot the tears Del Cascar wept.


TURN ME TO MY YELLOW LEAVES

Turn me to my yellow leaves,
I am better satisfied;
There is something in me grieves--
That was never born, and died.
Let me be a scarlet flame
On a windy autumn morn,
I who never had a name,
Nor from breathing image born.
From the margin let me fall
Where the farthest stars sink down,
And the void consumes me,--all
In nothingness to drown.
Let me dream my dream entire,
Withered as an autumn leaf--
Let me have my vain desire,
Vain--as it is brief.


IRONIC: LL.D.

There are no hollows any more
Between the mountains; the prairie floor
Is like a curtain with the drape
Of the winds' invisible shape;
And nowhere seen and nowhere heard
The sea's quiet as a sleeping bird.

Now we're traveling, what holds back
Arrival, in the very track
Where the urge put forth; so we stay
And move a thousand miles a day.
Time's a Fancy ringing bells
Whose meaning, charlatan history, tells!


SCINTILLA

I kissed a kiss in youth
  Upon a dead man's brow;
And that was long ago,--
  And I'm a grown man now.

It's lain there in the dust,
  Thirty years and more;--
My lips that set a light
  At a dead man's door.


SIC VITA

Heart free, hand free,
  Blue above, brown under,
All the world to me
  Is a place of wonder.
Sun shine, moon shine,
  Stars, and winds a-blowing,
All into this heart of mine
  Flowing, flowing, flowing!

Mind free, step free,
  Days to follow after,
Joys of life sold to me
  For the price of laughter.
Girl's love, man's love,
  Love of work and duty,
Just a will of God's to prove
  Beauty, beauty, beauty!


RHAPSODY

I am glad daylong for the gift of song,
For time and change and sorrow;
For the sunset wings and the world-end things
Which hang on the edge of to-morrow.
I am glad for my heart whose gates apart
Are the entrance-place of wonders,
Where dreams come in from the rush and din
Like sheep from the rains and thunders.




    George Reginald Margetson


STANZAS FROM THE FLEDGLING BARD AND THE POETRY SOCIETY

_Part I_

I'm out to find the new, the modern school,
Where Science trains the fledgling bard to fly,
Where critics teach the ignorant, the fool,
To write the stuff the editors would buy;
It matters not e'en tho it be a lie,--
Just so it aims to smash tradition's crown
And build up one instead decked with a new renown.

A thought is haunting me by night and day,
And in some safe archive I seek to lay it;
I have some startling thing I wish to say,
And they can put me wise just how to say it.
Without their aid, I, like the ass, must bray it,
Without due knowledge of its mood and tense,
And so 'tis sure to fail the bard to recompense.

Will some kind one direct me to that college
Where every budding genius now is headed,
The only source to gain poetic knowledge,
Where all the sacred truths lay deep imbedded,
Where nothing but the genuine goods are shredded,--
The factory where they shape new feet and meters
That make poetic symbols sound like carpet beaters.

       *       *       *       *       *

I hope I'll be an eligible student,
E'en tho I am no poet in a sense,
But just a hot-head youth with ways imprudent,--
A rustic ranting rhymer like by chance
Who thinks that he can make the muses dance
By beating on some poet's borrowed lyre,
To win some fool's applause and please his own desire.

Perhaps they'll never know or e'en suspect
That I am not a true, a genuine poet;
If in the poet's colors I am decked
They may not ask me e'er to prove or show it.
I'll play the wise old cock, nor try to crow it,
But be content to gaze with open mind;
I'll never show the lead but eye things from behind.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Part II_

I have a problem all alone to solve,
A problem how to find the poetry club,
It makes my sky piece like a top revolve,
For fear that they might mark me for a snob.
They'll call me poetry monger and then dub
Me rustic rhymer, anything they choose,
Ay, anything at all, but heaven's immortal muse.

Great Byron, when he published his Childe book,
In which he sang of all his lovely dears,
Called forth hot condemnation and cold look,
From lesser mortals who were not his peers.
They chided him for telling his affairs,
Because they could not tell their own so well,
They plagued the poet lord and made his life a hell.

They called him lewd, vile drunkard, vicious wight,
And all because he dared to tell the truth,
Because he was no cursed hermaphrodite,--
A full fledged genius with the fire of youth.
They hounded him, they hammered him forsooth;
Because he blended human with divine,
They branded him "the bard of women and of wine."

Of course I soak the booze once in a while,
But I don't wake the town to sing and shout it;
I love the girls, they win me with a smile,
But no one knows, for I won't write about it.
And so the fools may never think to doubt it,
When I declare I am a moral man,
As gifted, yet as good as God did ever plan.

       *       *       *       *       *

Every man has got a hobby,
Every poet has some fault,
Every sweet contains its bitter,
Every fresh thing has its salt.

Every mountain has a valley,
Every valley has a hill,
Every ravine is a river,
Every river is a rill.

Every fool has got some wisdom,
Every wise man is a fool,
Every scholar is a block-head,
Every dunce has been to school.

Every bad man is a good man,
Every fat man is not stout,
Every good man is a bad man
But 'tis hard to find him out.

Every strong man is a weak man,
You may doubt it as you please,
Every well man is a sick man,
Every doctor has disease.




    James Weldon Johnson


O BLACK AND UNKNOWN BARDS

O black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrel's lyre?
Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?
Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,
Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise
Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?

Heart of what slave poured out such melody
As "Steal away to Jesus"? On its strains
His spirit must have nightly floated free,
Though still about his hands he felt his chains.
Who heard great "Jordan roll"? Whose starward eye
Saw chariot "swing low"? And who was he
That breathed that comforting, melodic sigh,
"Nobody knows de trouble I see"?

What merely living clod, what captive thing,
Could up toward God through all its darkness grope,
And find within its deadened heart to sing
These songs of sorrow, love and faith, and hope?
How did it catch that subtle undertone,
That note in music heard not with the ears?
How sound the elusive reed so seldom blown,
Which stirs the soul or melts the heart to tears.

Not that great German master in his dream
Of harmonies that thundered amongst the stars
At the creation, ever heard a theme
Nobler than "Go down, Moses." Mark its bars
How like a mighty trumpet-call they stir
The blood. Such are the notes that men have sung
Going to valorous deeds; such tones there were
That helped make history when Time was young.

There is a wide, wide wonder in it all,
That from degraded rest and servile toil
The fiery spirit of the seer should call
These simple children of the sun and soil.
O black slave singers, gone, forgot, unfamed,
You--you alone, of all the long, long line
Of those who've sung untaught, unknown, unnamed,
Have stretched out upward, seeking the divine.

You sang not deeds of heroes or of kings;
No chant of bloody war, no exulting pean
Of arms-won triumphs; but your humble strings
You touched in chord with music empyrean.
You sang far better than you knew; the songs
That for your listeners' hungry hearts sufficed
Still live,--but more than this to you belongs:
You sang a race from wood and stone to Christ.


SENCE YOU WENT AWAY

Seems lak to me de stars don't shine so bright,
Seems lak to me de sun done loss his light,
Seems lak to me der's nothin' goin' right,
  Sence you went away.

Seems lak to me de sky ain't half so blue,
Seems lak to me dat ev'ything wants you,
Seems lak to me I don't know what to do,
  Sence you went away.

Seems lak to me dat ev'ything is wrong,
Seems lak to me de day's jes twice es long,
Seems lak to me de bird's forgot his song,
  Sence you went away.

Seems lak to me I jes can't he'p but sigh,
Seems lak to me ma th'oat keeps gittin' dry,
Seems lak to me a tear stays in ma eye,
  Sence you went away.


THE CREATION

(_A Negro Sermon_)

And God stepped out on space,
And He looked around and said,
_"I'm lonely--
I'll make me a world."_

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said, _"That's good!"_

Then God reached out and took the light in His hands,
And God rolled the light around in His hands
Until He made the sun;
And He set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said, _"That's good!"_

Then God himself stepped down--
And the sun was on His right hand,
And the moon was on His left;
The stars were clustered about His head,
And the earth was under His feet.
And God walked, and where He trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then He stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And He spat out the seven seas;
He batted His eyes, and the lightnings flashed;
He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled;
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around His shoulder.

Then God raised His arm and He waved His hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And He said, _"Bring forth! Bring forth!"_
And quicker than God could drop His hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said, _"That's good!"_

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that He had made.
He looked at His sun,
And He looked at His moon,
'And He looked at His little stars;
He looked on His world
With all its living things,
And God said, _"I'm lonely still."_

Then God sat down
On the side of a hill where He could think;
By a deep, wide river He sat down;
With His head in His hands,
God thought and thought,
Till He thought, _"I'll make me a man!"_

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled Him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of His hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till He shaped it in His own image;

Then into it He blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen.  Amen.


THE WHITE WITCH

O brothers mine, take care! Take care!
The great white witch rides out to-night.
Trust not your prowess nor your strength,
Your only safety lies in flight;
For in her glance there is a snare,
And in her smile there is a blight.

The great white witch you have not seen?
Then, younger brothers mine, forsooth,
Like nursery children you have looked
For ancient hag and snaggle-tooth;
But no, not so; the witch appears
In all the glowing charms of youth.

Her lips are like carnations, red,
Her face like new-born lilies, fair,
Her eyes like ocean waters, blue,
She moves with subtle grace and air,
And all about her head there floats
The golden glory of her hair.

But though she always thus appears
In form of youth and mood of mirth,
Unnumbered centuries are hers,
The infant planets saw her birth;
The child of throbbing Life is she,
Twin sister to the greedy earth.

And back behind those smiling lips,
And down within those laughing eyes,
And underneath the soft caress
Of hand and voice and purring sighs,
The shadow of the panther lurks,
The spirit of the vampire lies.

For I have seen the great white witch,
And she has led me to her lair,
And I have kissed her red, red lips
And cruel face so white and fair;
Around me she has twined her arms,
And bound me with her yellow hair.

I felt those red lips burn and sear
My body like a living coal;
Obeyed the power of those eyes
As the needle trembles to the pole;
And did not care although I felt
The strength go ebbing from my soul.

Oh! she has seen your strong young limbs,
And heard your laughter loud and gay,
And in your voices she has caught
The echo of a far-off day,
When man was closer to the earth;
And she has marked you for her prey.

She feels the old Antaean strength
In you, the great dynamic beat
Of primal passions, and she sees
In you the last besieged retreat
Of love relentless, lusty, fierce,
Love pain-ecstatic, cruel-sweet.

O, brothers mine, take care! Take care!
The great white witch rides out to-night.
O, younger brothers mine, beware!
Look not upon her beauty bright;
For in her glance there is a snare,
And in her smile there is a blight.


MOTHER NIGHT

Eternities before the first-born day,
  Or ere the first sun fledged his wings of flame,
  Calm Night, the everlasting and the same,
  A brooding mother over chaos lay.
And whirling suns shall blaze and then decay,
  Shall run their fiery courses and then claim
  The haven of the darkness whence they came;
  Back to Nirvanic peace shall grope their way.

So when my feeble sun of life burns out,
  And sounded is the hour for my long sleep,
  I shall, full weary of the feverish light,
Welcome the darkness without fear or doubt,
  And heavy-lidded, I shall softly creep
  Into the quiet bosom of the Night.


O SOUTHLAND!

O Southland! O Southland!
  Have you not heard the call,
The trumpet blown, the word made known
  To the nations, one and all?
The watchword, the hope-word,
  Salvation's present plan?
A gospel new, for all--for you:
  Man shall be saved by man.

O Southland! O Southland!
  Do you not hear to-day
The mighty beat of onward feet,
  And know you not their way?
'Tis forward, 'tis upward,
  On to the fair white arch
Of Freedom's dome, and there is room
  For each man who would march.

O Southland, fair Southland!
  Then why do you still cling
To an idle age and a musty page,
  To a dead and useless thing?
'Tis springtime! 'Tis work-time!
  The world is young again!
And God's above, and God is love,
  And men are only men.

O Southland! my Southland!
  O birthland! do not shirk
The toilsome task, nor respite ask,
  But gird you for the work.
Remember, remember
  That weakness stalks in pride;
That he is strong who helps along
  The faint one at his side.


BROTHERS

See! There he stands; not brave, but with an air
Of sullen stupor. Mark him well! Is he
Not more like brute than man? Look in his eye!
No light is there; none, save the glint that shines
In the now glaring, and now shifting orbs
Of some wild animal caught in the hunter's trap.

  How came this beast in human shape and form?
Speak, man!--We call you man because you wear
His shape--How are you thus? Are you not from
That docile, child-like, tender-hearted race
Which we have known three centuries? Not from
That more than faithful race which through three wars
Fed our dear wives and nursed our helpless babes
Without a single breach of trust? Speak out!

  I am, and am not.

      Then who, why are you?

  I am a thing not new, I am as old
As human nature. I am that which lurks,
Ready to spring whenever a bar is loosed;
The ancient trait which fights incessantly
Against restraint, balks at the upward climb;
The weight forever seeking to obey
The law of downward pull;--and I am more:
The bitter fruit am I of planted seed;
The resultant, the inevitable end
Of evil forces and the powers of wrong.

  Lessons in degradation, taught and learned,
The memories of cruel sights and deeds,
The pent-up bitterness, the unspent hate
Filtered through fifteen generations have
Sprung up and found in me sporadic life.
In me the muttered curse of dying men,
On me the stain of conquered women, and
Consuming me the fearful fires of lust,
Lit long ago, by other hands than mine.
In me the down-crushed spirit, the hurled-back prayers
Of wretches now long dead,--their dire bequests,--
In me the echo of the stifled cry
Of children for their bartered mothers' breasts.

  I claim no race, no race claims me; I am
No more than human dregs; degenerate;
The monstrous offspring of the monster, Sin;
I am--just what I am. . . . The race that fed
Your wives and nursed your babes would do the same
To-day, but I--
               Enough, the brute must die!
Quick! Chain him to that oak! It will resist
The fire much longer than this slender pine.
Now bring the fuel! Pile it'round him! Wait!
Pile not so fast or high! or we shall lose
The agony and terror in his face.

And now the torch! Good fuel that! the flames
Already leap head-high. Ha! hear that shriek!
And there's another