summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/76889-0.txt
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to '76889-0.txt')
-rw-r--r--76889-0.txt8826
1 files changed, 8826 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/76889-0.txt b/76889-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..91d4295
--- /dev/null
+++ b/76889-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,8826 @@
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76889 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+CAROLING DUSK
+
+
+
+
+_Books by Countee Cullen_
+
+
+Color
+Copper Sun
+The Ballad of the Brown Girl
+The Medea
+The Lost Zoo
+My Lives and How I Lost Them
+On These I Stand
+One Way to Heaven
+
+
+_Edited by Countee Cullen_
+
+Caroling Dusk
+
+
+
+
+CAROLING
+DUSK
+
+_An Anthology of Verse
+by Negro Poets_
+
+Edited by
+COUNTEE CULLEN
+
+HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS
+New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London
+
+
+
+
+CAROLING DUSK. Copyright 1927 by Harper & Brothers. Copyright renewed
+1955 by Ida M. Cullen. All rights reserved. Printed in the United
+States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
+in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
+case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
+For information address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd
+Street, New York, N. Y. 10022. Published simultaneously in Canada by
+Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto.
+
+ISBN: 0-06-010926-2
+
+LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 27-23175
+
+
+
+
+ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
+
+
+For permission to use the poems in this anthology, the
+editor wishes to thank the poets represented, and the following
+magazines and publishers:
+
+Dodd, Mead and Co. for poems from _The Collected Poems
+of Paul Laurence Dunbar_
+
+Boni and Liveright for poems from _Cane_ by Jean Toomer
+
+Alfred A. Knopf for poems from _The Weary Blues_ and
+_Fine Clothes to the Jew_ by Langston Hughes
+
+The Viking Press for “The Creation” from _God’s Trombones_
+by James Weldon Johnson
+
+The Cornhill Publishing Co. for poems from _The Band of
+Gideon_ by Joseph S. Cotter, and from _Fifty Years and
+other Poems_ by James Weldon Johnson, and from _The
+Heart of a Woman_ by Georgia Douglas Johnson
+
+Harcourt, Brace & Co. for poems from _Harlem Shadows_
+by Claude McKay and for _A Litany of Atlanta_ by W.
+E. B. DuBois
+
+Harper & Brothers for poems from _Color_ and _Copper Sun_
+by Countee Cullen
+
+B. J. Brimmer Co. for poems from _Bronze_ by Georgia
+Douglas Johnson
+
+Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life for _Desolate_ and
+_My House_ by Claude McKay; _Old Black Men_ by Georgia
+Douglas Johnson; _Summer Matures_, _Fulfillment_, _The
+Road_ by Helene Johnson; _Portrait_ by George Leonard
+Allen; _For the Candlelight_ by Angelina Weld Grimké;
+_The Return_, _Golgotha Is a Mountain_, _The Day Breakers_,
+and _God Give to Men_ by Arna Bontemps; _I Have a
+Rendezvous With Life_ by Countee Cullen; _Lines Written
+at the Grave of Alexander Dumas_ and _Hatred_ by Gwendolyn
+B. Bennett; _Joy_, _Solace_, _Interim_ by Clarissa
+Scott Delany; _Confession_ by Donald Jeffrey Hayes;
+_On Seeing Two Brown Boys In a Catholic Church_
+and _To a Persistent Phantom_ by Frank Horne; _Poem_
+by Blanche Taylor Dickinson; _The New Negro_ by James
+Edward McCall; _The Tragedy of Pete_ and _The Wayside
+Well_ by Joseph S. Cotter, Sr.; _No Images_ by Waring
+Cuney; _Northboun’_ by Lucy Ariel Williams; _Shadow_
+by Richard Bruce; _The Resurrection_ by Jonathan H.
+Brooks; _Africa and Transformation_ by Lewis Alexander
+
+The Conning Tower of the New York World for _Noblesse
+Oblige_ by Jessie Redmond Fauset
+
+The Crisis for _That Hill_ by Blanche Taylor Dickinson;
+_Nocturne at Bethesda_ by Arna Bontemps; _Letters Found
+Near a Suicide_ by Frank Horne; _Morning Light_ by
+Mary Effie Lee Newsome; _Dunbar_ by Anne Spencer
+
+The Century for _My City_ by James Weldon Johnson
+
+Vanity Fair for _Bottled_ by Helene Johnson
+
+Palms for _A Tree Design_ by Arna Bontemps; _Lines to a
+Nasturtium_ by Anne Spencer; _Black Madonna_ by Albert
+Rice; _Words! Words!_ by Jessie Fauset; _Magula_ by
+Helene Johnson; and _The Mask_ by Clarissa Scott
+Delany
+
+Fire for _Jungle Taste_ by Edward S. Silvera; _Length of
+Moon_ by Arna Bontemps; _The Death Bed_ by Waring
+Cuney
+
+The World Tomorrow for _A Black Man Talks of Reaping_
+by Arna Bontemps
+
+The Survey for _Russian Cathedral_ by Claude McKay
+
+The Atlantic Monthly for _Nativity_ and _The Serving Girl_
+by Gladys Casley Hayford
+
+The Carolina Magazine for _The Dark Brother_ by Lewis
+Alexander
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+
+It is now five years since James Weldon Johnson
+edited with a brilliant essay on “The Negro’s Creative
+Genius” _The Book of American Negro Poetry_, four
+years since the publication of Robert T. Kerlin’s _Negro
+Poets and Their Poems_, and three years since from the
+Trinity College Press in Durham, North Carolina, came
+_An Anthology of Verse by American Negroes_, edited by
+Newman Ivey White and Walter Clinton Jackson. The
+student of verse by American Negro poets will find in
+these three anthologies comprehensive treatment of the
+work of Negro poets from Phyllis Wheatley, the first
+American Negro known to have composed verses, to
+writers of the present day. With Mr. Johnson’s scholarly
+and painstaking survey, from both a historical
+and a critical standpoint, of the entire range of verse
+by American Negroes, and with Professor Kerlin’s inclusions
+of excerpts from the work of most of those
+Negro poets whose poems were extant at the time of
+his compilation, there would be scant reason for the
+assembling and publication of another such collection
+were it not for the new voices that within the past three
+to five years have sung so significantly as to make imperative
+an anthology recording some snatches of their
+songs. To those intelligently familiar with what is
+popularly termed the renaissance in art and literature
+by Negroes, it will not be taken as a sentimentally risky
+observation to contend that the recent yearly contests
+conducted by Negro magazines, such as _Opportunity_
+and _The Crisis_, as well as a growing tendency on the
+part of white editors to give impartial consideration to
+the work of Negro writers, have awakened to a happy
+articulation many young Negro poets who had thitherto
+lisped only in isolated places in solitary numbers. It is
+primarily to give them a concerted hearing that this
+collection has been published. For most of these poets
+the publication of individual volumes of their poems is
+not an immediate issue. However, many of their poems
+during these four or five years of accentuated interest
+in the artistic development of the race have become familiar
+to a large and ever-widening circle of readers
+who, we feel, will welcome a volume marshaling what
+would otherwise remain for some time a miscellany of
+deeply appreciated but scattered verse.
+
+The place of poetry in the cultural development of a
+race or people has always been one of importance;
+indeed, poets are prone, with many good reasons for
+their conceit, to hold their art the most important.
+Thus while essentially wishing to draw the public ear to
+the work of the younger Negro poets, there have been
+included with their poems those of modern Negro poets
+already established and acknowledged, by virtue of their
+seniority and published books, as worthy practitioners
+of their art. There were Negro poets before Paul Laurence
+Dunbar, but his uniquity as the first Negro to
+attain to and maintain a distinguished place among
+American poets, a place fairly merited by the most
+acceptable standards of criticism, makes him the pivotal
+poet of this volume.
+
+I have called this collection an anthology of verse by
+Negro poets rather than an anthology of Negro verse,
+since this latter designation would be more confusing
+than accurate. Negro poetry, it seems to me, in the
+sense that we speak of Russian, French, or Chinese
+poetry, must emanate from some country other than
+this in some language other than our own. Moreover,
+the attempt to corral the outbursts of the ebony muse
+into some definite mold to which all poetry by Negroes
+will conform seems altogether futile and aside from the
+facts. This country’s Negro writers may here and
+there turn some singular facet toward the literary sun,
+but in the main, since theirs is also the heritage of the
+English language, their work will not present any serious
+aberration from the poetic tendencies of their times.
+The conservatives, the middlers, and the arch heretics
+will be found among them as among the white poets; and
+to say that the pulse beat of their verse shows generally
+such a fever, or the symptoms of such an ague, will
+prove on closer examination merely the moment’s exaggeration
+of a physician anxious to establish a new literary
+ailment. As heretical as it may sound, there is the
+probability that Negro poets, dependent as they are on
+the English language, may have more to gain from the
+rich background of English and American poetry than
+from any nebulous atavistic yearnings toward an African
+inheritance. Some of the poets herein represented
+will eventually find inclusion in any discriminatingly
+ordered anthology of American verse, and there will
+be no reason for giving such selections the needless
+distinction of a separate section marked Negro verse.
+
+While I do not feel that the work of these writers
+conforms to anything that can be called the Negro
+school of poetry, neither do I feel that their work is
+varied to the point of being sensational; rather is theirs
+a variety within a uniformity that is trying to maintain
+the higher traditions of English verse. I trust the
+selections here presented bear out this contention. The
+poet writes out of his experience, whether it be personal
+or vicarious, and as these experiences differ among
+other poets, so do they differ among Negro poets; for
+the double obligation of being both Negro and American
+is not so unified as we are often led to believe. A survey
+of the work of Negro poets will show that the individual
+diversifying ego transcends the synthesizing hue. From
+the roots of varied experiences have flowered the dialect
+of Dunbar, the recent sermon poems of James Weldon
+Johnson, and some of Helene Johnson’s more colloquial
+verses, which, differing essentially only in a few expressions
+peculiar to Negro slang, are worthy counterparts
+of verses done by John V. A. Weaver “in American.”
+Attempt to hedge all these in with a name, and your
+imagination must deny the facts. Langston Hughes,
+poetizing the blues in his zeal to represent the Negro
+masses, and Sterling Brown, combining a similar interest
+in such poems as “Long Gone” and “The Odyssey of
+Big Boy” with a capacity for turning a neat sonnet
+according to the rules, represent differences as unique
+as those between Burns and Whitman. Jessie Fauset
+with Cornell University and training at the Sorbonne
+as her intellectual equipment surely justifies the very
+subjects and forms of her poems: “Touché,” “La Vie
+C’est la Vie,” “Noblesse Oblige,” etc.; while Lewis Alexander,
+with no known degree from the University of
+Tokyo, is equally within the province of his creative
+prerogatives in composing Japanese _hokkus_ and _tankas_.
+Although Anne Spencer lives in Lynchburg, Virginia,
+and in her biographical note recognizes the Negro
+as the great American taboo, I have seen but two poems
+by her which are even remotely concerned with this
+subject; rather does she write with a cool precision
+that calls forth comparison with Amy Lowell and the
+influence of a rock-bound seacoast. And Lula Lowe
+Weeden, the youngest poet in the volume, living in the
+same Southern city, is too young to realize that she
+is colored in an environment calculated to impress her
+daily with the knowledge of this pigmentary anomaly.
+
+There are lights and shades of difference even in their
+methods of decrying race injustices, where these peculiar
+experiences of Negro life cannot be overlooked.
+Claude McKay is most exercised, rebellious, and
+vituperative to a degree that clouds his lyricism in many
+instances, but silhouettes most forcibly his high dudgeon;
+while neither Arna Bontemps, at all times cool,
+calm, and intensely religious, nor Georgia Douglas
+Johnson, in many instances bearing up bravely under
+comparison with Sara Teasdale, takes advantage of the
+numerous opportunities offered them for rhymed
+polemics.
+
+If dialect is missed in this collection, it is enough to
+state that the day of dialect as far as Negro poets are
+concerned is in the decline. Added to the fact that
+these poets are out of contact with this fast-dying medium,
+certain sociological considerations and the natural
+limitations of dialect for poetic expression militate
+against its use even as a _tour de force_. In a day when
+artificiality is so vigorously condemned, the Negro poet
+would be foolish indeed to turn to dialect. The majority
+of present-day poems in dialect are the efforts
+of white poets.
+
+This anthology, by no means offered as _the_ anthology
+of verse by Negro poets, is but a prelude, we hope, to
+that fuller symphony which Negro poets will in time
+contribute to the national literature, and we shall be
+sadly disappointed if the next few years do not find
+this collection entirely outmoded.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The biographical notices carried with these poems
+have been written by the poets themselves save in three
+cases (Dunbar’s having been written by his wife, the
+younger Cotter’s by his father, and Lula Weeden’s by
+her mother), and if they do not reveal to a curious
+public all it might wish to know about the poets, they
+at least reveal all that the poets deem necessary and
+discreet for the public to know.
+
+COUNTEE CULLEN.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+ FOREWORD vii
+
+ PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
+ Ere Sleep Comes Down to Soothe the Weary Eyes 2
+ Death Song 4
+ Life 5
+ After the Quarrel 5
+ Ships that Pass in the Night 7
+ We Wear the Mask 8
+ Sympathy 8
+ The Debt 9
+
+ JOSEPH S. COTTER, SR.
+ The Tragedy of Pete 11
+ The Way-side Well 15
+
+ JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
+ From the German of Uhland 17
+ The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face 18
+ The Creation 19
+ The White Witch 22
+ My City 25
+
+ WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT DU BOIS
+ A Litany of Atlanta 26
+
+ WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
+ Scintilla 31
+ Rye Bread 31
+ October XXIX, 1795 32
+ Del Cascar 33
+
+ JAMES EDWARD MCCALL
+ The New Negro 34
+
+ ANGELINA WELD GRIMKÉ
+ Hushed by the Hands of Sleep 36
+ Greenness 36
+ The Eyes of My Regret 37
+ Grass Fingers 38
+ Surrender 38
+ The Ways o’ Men 39
+ Tenebris 40
+ When the Green Lies Over the Earth 41
+ A Mona Lisa 42
+ Paradox 43
+ Your Hands 44
+ I Weep 45
+ For the Candle Light 45
+ Dusk 46
+ The Puppet Player 46
+ A Winter Twilight 46
+
+ ANNE SPENCER
+ Neighbors 47
+ I Have a Friend 47
+ Substitution 48
+ Questing 48
+ Life-long, Poor Browning 49
+ Dunbar 50
+ Innocence 51
+ Creed 51
+ Lines to a Nasturtium 52
+ At the Carnival 53
+
+ MARY EFFIE LEE NEWSOME
+ Morning Light 55
+ Pansy 56
+ Sassafras Tea 56
+ Sky Pictures 57
+ The Quilt 58
+ The Baker’s Boy 58
+ Wild Roses 59
+ Quoits 59
+
+ JOHN FREDERICK MATHEUS
+ Requiem 61
+
+ FENTON JOHNSON
+ When I Die 62
+ Puck Goes to Court 63
+ The Marathon Runner 64
+
+ JESSIE FAUSET
+ Words! Words! 65
+ Touché 66
+ Noblesse Oblige 67
+ La Vie C’est la Vie 69
+ The Return 70
+ Rencontre 70
+ Fragment 70
+
+ ALICE DUNBAR NELSON
+ Snow in October 71
+ Sonnet 72
+ I Sit and Sew 73
+
+ GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON
+ Service 75
+ Hope 75
+ The Suppliant 76
+ Little Son 76
+ Old Black Men 77
+ Lethe 77
+ Proving 77
+ I Want to Die While You Love Me 78
+ Recessional 79
+ My Little Dreams 79
+ What Need Have I for Memory? 80
+ When I Am Dead 80
+ The Dreams of the Dreamer 80
+ The Heart of a Woman 81
+
+ CLAUDE MCKAY
+ America 83
+ Exhortation: Summer, 1919 84
+ Flame-heart 85
+ The Wild Goat 87
+ Russian Cathedral 87
+ Desolate 88
+ Absence 91
+ My House 92
+
+ JEAN TOOMER
+ Reapers 94
+ Evening Song 94
+ Georgia Dusk 95
+ Song of the Son 96
+ Cotton Song 97
+ Face 98
+ November Cotton Flower 99
+
+ JOSEPH S. COTTER, JR.
+ Rain Music 100
+ Supplication 101
+ An April Day 102
+ The Deserter 102
+ And What Shall You Say? 103
+ The Band of Gideon 103
+
+ BLANCHE TAYLOR DICKINSON
+ The Walls of Jericho 106
+ Poem 107
+ Revelation 107
+ That Hill 109
+ To an Icicle 110
+ Four Walls 110
+
+ FRANK HORNE
+ On Seeing Two Brown Boys in a Catholic Church 112
+ To a Persistent Phantom 113
+ Letters Found Near a Suicide 114
+ Nigger 120
+
+ LEWIS ALEXANDER
+ Negro Woman 122
+ Africa 123
+ Transformation 124
+ The Dark Brother 124
+ Tanka I-VIII 125
+ Japanese Hokku 127
+ Day and Night 129
+
+ STERLING A. BROWN
+ Odyssey of Big Boy 130
+ Maumee Ruth 133
+ Long Gone 134
+ To a Certain Lady, in Her Garden 136
+ Salutamus 138
+ Challenge 138
+ Return 139
+
+ CLARISSA SCOTT DELANY
+ Joy 140
+ Solace 141
+ Interim 142
+ The Mask 143
+
+ LANGSTON HUGHES
+ I, Too 145
+ Prayer 146
+ Song for a Dark Girl 147
+ Homesick Blues 147
+ Fantasy in Purple 148
+ Dream Variation 149
+ The Negro Speaks of Rivers 149
+ Poem 150
+ Suicide’s Note 151
+ Mother to Son 151
+ A House in Taos 152
+
+ GWENDOLYN B. BENNETT
+ Quatrains 155
+ Secret 155
+ Advice 156
+ To a Dark Girl 157
+ Your Songs 157
+ Fantasy 158
+ Lines Written at the Grave of Alexander Dumas 159
+ Hatred 160
+ Sonnet--1 160
+ Sonnet--2 161
+
+ ARNA BONTEMPS
+ The Return 163
+ A Black Man Talks of Reaping 165
+ To a Young Girl Leaving the Hill Country 165
+ Nocturne at Bethesda 166
+ Length of Moon 168
+ Lancelot 169
+ Gethsemane 169
+ A Tree Design 170
+ Blight 170
+ The Day-breakers 171
+ Close Your Eyes! 171
+ God Give to Men 172
+ Homing 172
+ Golgotha Is a Mountain 173
+
+ ALBERT RICE
+ The Black Madonna 177
+
+ COUNTEE CULLEN
+ Lines to Our Elders 179
+ I Have a Rendezvous with Life 180
+ Protest 181
+ Yet Do I Marvel 182
+ To Lovers of Earth: Fair Warning 182
+ From the Dark Tower 183
+ To John Keats, Poet, at Springtime 184
+ Four Epitaphs 186
+ Incident 187
+
+ DONALD JEFFREY HAYES
+ Inscription 188
+ Auf Wiedersehen 189
+ Night 189
+ Confession 190
+ Nocturne 190
+ After All 191
+
+ JONATHAN HENDERSON BROOKS
+ The Resurrection 193
+ The Last Quarter Moon of the Dying Year 195
+ Paean 195
+
+ GLADYS MAY CASELY HAYFORD
+ Nativity 197
+ Rainy Season Love Song 198
+ The Serving Girl 200
+ Baby Cobina 200
+
+ LUCY ARIEL WILLIAMS
+ Northboun’ 201
+
+ GEORGE LEONARD ALLEN
+ To Melody 204
+ Portrait 204
+
+ RICHARD BRUCE
+ Shadow 206
+ Cavalier 207
+
+ WARING CUNEY
+ The Death Bed 208
+ A Triviality 209
+ I Think I See Him There 210
+ Dust 210
+ No Images 212
+ The Radical 212
+ True Love 213
+
+ EDWARD S. SILVERA
+ South Street 214
+ Jungle Taste 214
+
+ HELENE JOHNSON
+ What Do I Care for Morning 216
+ Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem 217
+ Summer Matures 217
+ Poem 218
+ Fulfillment 219
+ The Road 221
+ Bottled 221
+ Magalu 223
+
+ WESLEY CURTWRIGHT
+ The Close of Day 225
+
+ LULA LOWE WEEDEN
+ Me Alone 227
+ Have You Seen It 228
+ Robin Red Breast 228
+ The Stream 228
+ The Little Dandelion 229
+ Dance 229
+
+ INDEX 230
+
+
+
+
+PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
+
+
+Paul Laurence Dunbar. Born, Dayton, Ohio, June 27,
+1872. Educated in public schools, and graduated from
+Dayton High School, where he achieved some distinction.
+Editor of school paper, and noted as a versifier, from his
+grammar-school days. Printed his first book, _Oak and
+Ivy_, in 1893.
+
+Two friends of his early manhood helped most to shape
+his career, and to encourage him in his days of struggle--Dr.
+H. A. Tobey, the celebrated alienist of Toledo, Ohio,
+and Frederick Douglass. The former helped him to bring
+his second book, _Majors and Minors_, before the public; the
+latter, with whom he was associated in the Negro Building
+at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, was the hero of the
+poet’s dreams, the one to whom he dedicated two of his
+most serious poems.
+
+Although Dunbar is remembered largely for his dialect
+verse, it was never his intention to concentrate on dialect.
+His poems in pure English constitute the greater bulk of
+his verse, and that to which he was most passionately devoted.
+The tragedy of his life was that the world “turned
+to praise the jingle in a broken tongue.” His friendship
+for Booker Washington and a visit to Tuskegee inspired
+him to write the Tuskegee School Song, which is sung to
+the tune of “Fair Harvard.”
+
+The famous criticism of _Majors and Minors_ by William
+Dean Howells in _Harper’s Weekly_, June 27, 1897 established
+Dunbar’s prestige as an important figure in American
+literature. From that time his success was assured.
+
+He was married to Alice Ruth Moore of New Orleans, a
+teacher in Brooklyn, N. Y., in March, 1898.
+
+He was as indefatigable a writer of prose as of poetry;
+short stories, novels, criticism, essays and some short plays
+poured from his pen. His published works, exclusive of
+the two volumes of verse mentioned above, are: _Lyrics of
+Lowly Life_, _Lyrics of the Hearthside_, _Lyrics of Sunshine
+and Shadow_; several smaller volumes, illustrated editions
+of poems in the preceding volumes; short stories, _Folks
+from Dixie_, _The Strength of Gideon_; novels, _The Uncalled_,
+_The Fanatics_, _The Love of Landry_, _The Sport of
+the Gods_.
+
+He died in Dayton, Ohio, February 9, 1906.
+
+_Alice Dunbar Nelson._
+
+
+ERE SLEEP COMES DOWN TO
+SOOTHE THE WEARY EYES[1]
+
+Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,
+Which all the day with ceaseless care have sought
+The magic gold which from the seeker flies;
+Ere dreams put on the gown and cap of thought,
+And make the waking world a world of lies,--
+Of lies most palpable, uncouth, forlorn,
+That say life’s full of aches and tears and sighs,--
+Oh, how with more than dreams the soul is torn,
+Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.
+
+Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,
+How all the griefs and heartaches we have known
+Come up like pois’nous vapors that arise
+From some base witch’s caldron, when the crone,
+To work some potent spell, her magic plies.
+The past which held its share of bitter pain,
+Whose ghost we prayed that Time might exorcise,
+Comes up, is lived and suffered o’er again,
+Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.
+
+Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,
+What phantoms fill the dimly lighted room;
+What ghostly shades in awe-creating guise
+Are bodied forth within the teeming gloom.
+What echoes faint of sad and soul-sick cries,
+And pangs of vague inexplicable pain
+That pay the spirit’s ceaseless enterprise,
+Come thronging through the chambers of the brain,
+Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.
+
+Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,
+Where ranges forth the spirit far and free?
+Through what strange realms and unfamiliar skies
+Tends her far course to lands of mystery?
+To lands unspeakable--beyond surmise,
+Where shapes unknowable to being spring,
+Till, faint of wing, the Fancy fails and dies
+Much wearied with the spirit’s journeying,
+Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.
+
+Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,
+How questioneth the soul that other soul,--
+The inner sense which neither cheats nor lies,
+But self exposes unto self, a scroll
+Full writ with all life’s acts unwise or wise,
+In characters indelible and known;
+So, trembling with the shock of sad surprise,
+The soul doth view its awful self alone,
+Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes.
+
+When sleep comes down to seal the weary eyes,
+The last dear sleep whose soft embrace is balm,
+And whom sad sorrow teaches us to prize
+For kissing all our passions into calm,
+Ah, then, no more we heed the sad world’s cries,
+Or seek to probe th’ eternal mystery,
+Or fret our souls at long-withheld replies,
+At glooms through which our visions cannot see,
+When sleep comes down to seal the weary eyes.
+
+
+DEATH SONG[2]
+
+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.
+
+
+LIFE[3]
+
+A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in,
+A minute to smile and an hour to weep in,
+A pint of joy to a peck of trouble,
+And never a laugh but the moans come double:
+ And that is life!
+
+A crust and a corner that love makes precious,
+With the smile to warm and the tears to refresh us:
+And joy seems sweeter when cares come after,
+And a moan is the finest of foils for laughter:
+ And that is life!
+
+
+AFTER THE QUARREL[4]
+
+So we, who’ve supped the self-same cup,
+To-night must lay our friendship by;
+Your wrath has burned your judgment up,
+Hot breath has blown the ashes high.
+You say that you are wronged--ah, well,
+I count that friendship poor, at best
+A bauble, a mere bagatelle,
+That cannot stand so slight a test.
+
+I fain would still have been your friend,
+And talked and laughed and loved with you;
+But since it must, why, let it end;
+The false but dies, ’tis not the true.
+So we are favored, you and I,
+Who only want the living truth.
+It was not good to nurse the lie;
+’Tis well it died in harmless youth.
+
+I go from you to-night to sleep.
+Why, what’s the odds? why should I grieve?
+I have no fund of tears to weep
+For happenings that undeceive.
+The days shall come, the days shall go
+Just as they came and went before.
+The sun shall shine, the streams shall flow
+Though you and I are friends no more.
+
+And in the volume of my years,
+Where all my thoughts and acts shall be,
+The page whereon your name appears
+Shall be forever sealed to me.
+Not that I hate you over-much,
+’Tis less of hate than love defied;
+Howe’er, our hands no more shall touch,
+We’ll go our ways, the world is wide.
+
+
+SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE
+NIGHT[5]
+
+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?
+
+
+WE WEAR THE MASK[6]
+
+We wear the mask that grins and lies,
+It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--
+This debt we pay to human guile;
+With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
+And mouth with myriad subtleties.
+
+Why should the world be over-wise,
+In counting all our tears and sighs?
+Nay, let them only see us, while
+ We wear the mask.
+
+We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
+To thee from tortured souls arise.
+We sing, but oh the clay is vile
+Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
+But let the world dream otherwise,
+ We wear the mask!
+
+
+SYMPATHY[7]
+
+I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
+When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
+When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass
+And the river flows like a stream of glass;
+When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
+And the faint perfume from its chalice steals--
+I know what the caged bird feels!
+
+I know why the caged bird beats his wing
+Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
+For he must fly back to his perch and cling
+When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
+And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
+And they pulse again with a keener sting--
+
+I know why he beats his wing!
+I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
+When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,--
+When he beats his bars and he would be free;
+It is not a carol of joy or glee,
+But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
+But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings--
+I know why the caged bird sings!
+
+
+THE DEBT[8]
+
+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!
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.
+
+[2] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.
+
+[3] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.
+
+[4] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.
+
+[5] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.
+
+[6] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.
+
+[7] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.
+
+[8] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.
+
+
+
+
+JOSEPH S. COTTER, SR.
+
+
+“I was born in Nelson County, Ky., February 2nd, 1861,
+on a farm owned by my great grandfather, Daniel Stapp,
+a tanner. In 1829 he bought himself and a part of his
+master’s farm. Later he bought his daughter, Lucinda,
+my mother’s mother.
+
+Martha, my mother, was born on a nearby farm owned
+by her English-Indian father, Fleming Vaughan. Prior
+to my birth she lived in Bardstown and was a servant at
+“My Old Kentucky Home.” She took me to Bardstown
+soon after my birth and brought me to Louisville in my
+fourth week, and here I have lived ever since.
+
+I attended a private school and could read before my
+fourth year. Conditions were such that my attendance at
+school was very irregular. I quit school in my eighth
+year, having completed the third grade, and did not return
+until my twenty-second year.
+
+During this time I picked up rags in the streets and
+worked in tobacco factories and brick-yards. My nineteenth
+year found me a distiller in one of the largest
+distilleries in Kentucky. A turn of fortune made me a
+teamster. I hauled cotton and tobacco and made up my
+mind to enter the prize ring. Another turn of fortune
+put me into a Louisville public night school. Here I
+began in the third grade where I left off in my eighth
+year.
+
+At the end of two school sessions of five months each
+I was promoted to the high school. I keep this diploma
+under lock and key, for it is the only one I have ever
+received.
+
+The man who turned my attention from prize-fighting to
+night school and then to school teaching, and who discovered
+my knack for writing verses, was Dr. W. T.
+Peyton of Louisville. He was my greatest benefactor.
+
+My talent of whatever kind comes from Martha, my
+mother. She was poet, story-teller, dramatist and musician.
+My published works are: _A Rhyming_, _Links of
+Friendship_, _Caleb, the Degenerate_, a poetic drama, _A White
+Song And A Black One_ and _Negro Tales_. My unpublished
+works are: _Life’s Dawn And Dusk_, poems, _Caesar
+Driftwood and Other One Act Plays_ and _My Mother And
+Her Family_.”
+
+
+THE TRAGEDY OF PETE
+
+There was a man
+ Whose name was Pete,
+And he was a buck
+ From his head to his feet.
+
+He loved a dollar,
+ But hated a dime;
+And so was poor
+ Nine-tenths of the time.
+
+The Judge said “Pete,
+ What of your wife?”
+And Pete replied
+ “She lost her life.”
+
+“Pete,” said the Judge,
+ “Was it lost in a row?
+Tell me quick,
+ And tell me how.”
+
+Pete straightened up
+ With a hic and a sigh,
+Then looked the Judge
+ Full in the eye.
+
+“O, Judge, my wife
+ Would never go
+To a Sunday dance
+ Or a movie show.
+
+“But I went, Judge,
+ Both day and night,
+And came home broke
+ And also tight.
+
+“The moon was up,
+ My purse was down,
+And I was the bully
+ Of the bootleg town.
+
+“I was crooning a lilt
+ To corn and rye
+For the loop in my legs
+ And the fight in my eye.
+
+“I met my wife;
+ She was wearing a frown,
+And catechising
+ Her Sunday gown.
+
+‘O Pete, O Pete’
+ She cried aloud,
+‘The Devil is falling
+ Right out of a cloud.’
+
+“I looked straight up
+ And fell flat down
+And a Ford machine
+ Pinned my head to the ground.
+
+“The Ford moved on,
+ And my wife was in it;
+And I was sober,
+ That very minute.
+
+“For my head was bleeding,
+ My heart was a-flutter;
+And the moonshine within me
+ Was tipping the gutter.
+
+“The Ford, it faster
+ And faster sped
+Till it dipped and swerved
+ And my wife was dead.
+
+“Two bruised men lay
+ In a hospital ward--
+One seeking vengeance,
+ The other the Lord.
+
+“He said to me:
+ ‘Your wife was drunk,
+You are crazy,
+ And my Ford is junk.’
+
+“I raised my knife
+ And drove it in
+At the top of his head
+ And the point of his chin.
+
+“O Judge, O Judge,
+ If the State has a chair,
+Please bind me in it
+ And roast me there.”
+
+There was a man
+ Whose name was Pete,
+And he welcomed death
+ From his head to his feet.
+
+
+THE WAY-SIDE WELL
+
+A fancy halts my feet at the way-side well.
+It is not to drink, for they say the water is brackish.
+It is not to tryst, for a heart at the mile’s end beckons me on.
+It is not to rest, for what feet could be weary when a heart at the mile’s
+ end keeps time with their tread?
+It is not to muse, for the heart at the mile’s end is food for my being.
+I will question the well for my secret by dropping a pebble into it.
+Ah, it is dry.
+Strike lightning to the road, my feet, for hearts are like wells. You may
+ not know they are dry ’til you question their depths.
+Fancies clog the way to Heaven, and saints miss their crown.
+
+
+
+
+JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
+
+
+James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Fla.
+He graduated from Atlanta University with the degree of
+A. B., and he received the degree of A. M. from the same
+University in 1904. He spent three years in graduate
+work at Columbia University in the City of New York.
+The honorary degree of Litt.D. was conferred upon him
+by Talladega College, Talladega, Ala., in 1917, and by
+Howard University in 1923.
+
+For several years Mr. Johnson was principal of the
+colored high school at Jacksonville. He was admitted to
+the Florida bar in 1897, and practiced law in Jacksonville,
+until 1901, when he moved to New York to collaborate
+with his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, in writing for the
+light opera stage.
+
+In 1906, he was appointed United States Consul at
+Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, being transferred as Consul to
+Corinto, Nicaragua, in 1909. While in Corinto, he looked
+after the interests of his country during the stormy days
+of revolution which resulted in the downfall of Zelaya, and
+through the abortive revolution against Diaz.
+
+His knowledge of Spanish has been put to use in the
+translation of a number of Spanish plays. He was the
+translator for the English libretto of _Goyescas_, the Spanish
+grand opera produced by the Metropolitan Opera Company
+in 1915.
+
+Mr. Johnson was for ten years the Contributing Editor
+of the New York _Age_. He added to his distinction as a
+newspaper writer by winning in an editorial contest one
+of three prizes offered by the Philadelphia _Public Ledger_
+in 1916. His poems have appeared in the _Century_, the
+_Independent_, the _Crisis_ and other publications.
+
+In the spring of 1920, Mr. Johnson was sent by the
+National Association for the Advancement of Colored
+People to the black republic of Haiti, where he made an
+investigation of U. S. misrule. The charges which Mr.
+Johnson published in _The Nation_, of New York, upon his
+return were taken up by Senator Harding, and as a consequence
+a Naval Board of Inquiry was sent to Haiti and
+a Congressional Investigation promised. The articles published
+in _The Nation_ have since been republished in a
+pamphlet entitled, “Self-Determining Haiti.”
+
+Mr. Johnson is Secretary of the National Association
+for the Advancement of Colored People, a member of the
+Board of Directors of the American Fund for Public
+Service (The Garland Fund), and a trustee of Atlanta
+University.
+
+Mr. Johnson’s works include:
+
+_The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man_
+_Fifty Years and Other Poems_
+_English Libretto of “Goyescas”_
+_The Book of American Negro Poetry_
+_The Book of American Negro Spirituals_
+_Second Book of Negro Spirituals_
+_God’s Trombones (Seven Negro Sermons in Verse)_
+
+
+FROM THE GERMAN OF UHLAND
+
+Three students once tarried over the Rhine,
+And into Frau Wirthin’s turned to dine.
+
+“Say, hostess, have you good beer and wine?
+And where is that pretty daughter of thine?”
+
+“My beer and wine is fresh and clear.
+My daughter lies on her funeral bier.”
+
+They softly tipped into the room;
+She lay there in the silent gloom.
+
+The first the white cloth gently raised,
+And tearfully upon her gazed.
+
+“If thou wert alive, O, lovely maid,
+My heart at thy feet would to-day be laid!”
+
+The second covered her face again.
+And turned away with grief and pain.
+
+“Ah, thou upon thy snow-white bier!
+And I have loved thee so many a year.”
+
+The third drew back again the veil,
+And kissed the lips so cold and pale.
+
+“I’ve loved thee always, I love thee to-day,
+And will love thee, yes, forever and aye!”
+
+
+THE GLORY OF THE DAY WAS IN
+HER FACE
+
+The glory of the day was in her face,
+The beauty of the night was in her eyes.
+And over all her loveliness, the grace
+Of Morning blushing in the early skies.
+
+And in her voice, the calling of the dove;
+Like music of a sweet, melodious part.
+And in her smile, the breaking light of love;
+And all the gentle virtues in her heart.
+
+And now the glorious day, the beauteous night,
+The birds that signal to their mates at dawn,
+To my dull ears, to my tear-blinded sight
+Are one with all the dead, since she is gone.
+
+
+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 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.
+
+
+MY CITY
+
+When I come down to sleep death’s endless night,
+The threshold of the unknown dark to cross,
+What to me then will be the keenest loss,
+When this bright world blurs on my fading sight?
+Will it be that no more I shall see the trees
+Or smell the flowers or hear the singing birds
+Or watch the flashing streams or patient herds?
+No, I am sure it will be none of these.
+
+But, ah! Manhattan’s sights and sounds, her smells,
+Her crowds, her throbbing force, the thrill that comes
+From being of her a part, her subtile spells,
+Her shining towers, her avenues, her slums--
+O God! the stark, unutterable pity,
+To be dead, and never again behold my city!
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT DU BOIS
+
+
+I was born in Massachusetts and educated in her schools,
+at Fisk University, at Harvard and Berlin. My first published
+writings were news notes in _The New York Age_.
+Then I had an article in _The Atlantic Monthly_, and in 1896
+my doctor’s thesis on the slave trade was published as my
+first book. _The Souls of Black Folk_ appeared in 1903
+and one or two other books thereafter. I taught at Wilberforce,
+Pennsylvania and Atlanta and became editor of
+_The Crisis_ in 1910.
+
+
+A LITANY OF ATLANTA[9]
+
+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 will 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!_
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[9] From “Dark Water” by W. E. B. Du Bois, Copyright 1920 by Harcourt,
+Brace & Company, Inc.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
+
+
+William Stanley Braithwaite was born in Boston
+Dec. 6, 1878. He inherited the incentives and ideals of the
+intellect from an ancestry of British gentlemen. He has
+written verse and prose and was for many years leading
+reviewer of books in the _Boston Transcript_. He has published
+twenty volumes, and his yearly anthology of verse
+establishes for each year the best poetry printed in the
+magazines.
+
+
+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.
+
+
+RYE BREAD
+
+Father John’s bread was made of rye,
+Felicite’s bread was white;
+Father John loved the sun noon-high,
+Felicite, the moon at night.
+
+Father John drank wine with his bread;
+Felicite drank sweet milk;
+Father John loved flowers, pungent and red;
+Felicite, lilies soft as silk.
+
+Father John’s soul was made of bronze,
+That God’s salt was corroding;
+Felicite’s soul was a wind that runs
+With a blue flame of foreboding.
+
+Between these two was the shadow of a dome
+That cut their lives in twain;
+But Dionysus led them home
+In a chariot of pain.
+
+
+OCTOBER XXIX, 1795
+
+(Keats’ Birthday)
+
+Time sitting on the throne of Memory
+Bade all her subject Days the past had known
+Arise and say what thing gave them renown
+Unforgetable, ‘Rising from the sea,
+I gave the Genoese his dreams to be;’
+‘I saw the Corsican’s Guards swept down;’
+‘Colonies I made free from a tyrant’s crown;’--
+So each Day told its immortality.
+
+And with these blazing triumphs spoke one voice
+Whose wistful speech no vaunting did employ:
+‘I know not if ’twere by Fate’s chance or choice
+I hold the lowly birth of an English boy;
+I only know he made man’s heart rejoice
+Because he played with Beauty for a toy!’
+
+
+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.
+
+
+
+
+JAMES EDWARD McCALL
+
+
+James Edward McCall was born September 2, 1880 at
+Montgomery, Ala., and received his early education in the
+public schools of that city. Graduating from the Alabama
+State Normal in 1900 he entered Howard University as
+a medical student the same year, but some months later
+was forced to abandon his medical career, following an
+attack of typhoid fever leading to total blindness. Undaunted
+by this misfortune, he at once set out to develop
+his literary talent. During this period he read and studied
+much through the eyes of others, also writing many poems,
+a number of which were published in Southern dailies, the
+_New York World_ and other periodicals. _The Montgomery_
+(Alabama) _Advertiser_ styled him “The Blind Tom of
+Literature.” One of his poems, “_Meditation_,” has been
+compared to Bryant’s “Thanatopsis.”
+
+Despite his handicap, McCall determined to acquire a
+college education. Accompanied by his sister, he entered
+Albion College (Michigan) in 1905, where he was graduated
+two years later, being the only sightless student in
+the college. Returning to his natal city, he took up journalistic
+work, for some years being employed as a special
+writer for one of the local white dailies, also contributing
+to other periodicals, and ultimately publishing at Montgomery
+a successful race weekly--_The Emancipator_.
+
+This blind writer is ably assisted in his journalistic
+work by his wife, to whom he was married in 1914. He
+and his family moved to Detroit in 1920. He is city
+editor and editorial writer for the _Detroit Independent_,
+his editorials in this publication having been widely read
+and re-published throughout the country during the past
+two years.
+
+
+THE NEW NEGRO
+
+He scans the world with calm and fearless eyes,
+ Conscious within of powers long since forgot;
+At every step, new man-made barriers rise
+ To bar his progress--but he heeds them not.
+He stands erect, though tempests round him crash,
+ Though thunder bursts and billows surge and roll;
+He laughs and forges on, while lightnings flash
+ Along the rocky pathway to his goal.
+Impassive as a Sphinx, he stares ahead--
+ Foresees new empires rise and old ones fall;
+While caste-mad nations lust for blood to shed,
+ He sees God’s finger writing on the wall.
+With soul awakened, wise and strong he stands,
+Holding his destiny within his hands.
+
+
+
+
+ANGELINA WELD GRIMKÉ
+
+
+Angelina Weld Grimké was born in Boston, Mass., February
+27, 1880. She was a student at Carleton Academy,
+Northfield, Minn., Cushing Academy, Ashburnham, Mass.,
+and Girls’ Latin School, Boston. In 1902 she was graduated
+from the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics.
+In 1902 she began her career as a teacher in the Armstrong
+Manual Training School in Washington, D. C.;
+since 1916 she has taught in the Dunbar High School
+in the same city. She is the author of a three act play
+_Rachel_ published in 1920, short stories, and numerous
+poems.
+
+
+HUSHED BY THE HANDS OF SLEEP
+
+(To Dr. George F. Grant)
+
+
+_I_
+
+Hushed by the hands of Sleep,
+ By the beautiful hands of Sleep.
+Very gentle and quiet he lies,
+With a little smile of sweet surprise,
+Just softly hushed at lips and eyes,
+ Hushed by the hands of Sleep,
+ By the beautiful hands of Sleep.
+
+
+_II_
+
+Hushed by the hands of Sleep,
+ By the beautiful hands of Sleep.
+Death leaned down as his eyes grew dim,
+And his face, I know, was not strange, not grim,
+But oh! it was beautiful to him,
+ Hushed by the hands of Sleep,
+ By the beautiful hands of Sleep.
+
+
+GREENNESS
+
+Tell me is there anything lovelier,
+ Anything more quieting
+Than the green of little blades of grass
+And the green of little leaves?
+
+Is not each leaf a cool green hand,
+Is not each blade of grass a mothering green finger,
+Hushing the heart that beats and beats and beats?
+
+
+THE EYES OF MY REGRET
+
+Always at dusk, the same tearless experience,
+The same dragging of feet up the same well-worn path
+To the same well-worn rock;
+The same crimson or gold dropping away of the sun,
+The same tints--rose, saffron, violet, lavender, grey,
+Meeting, mingling, mixing mistily;
+Before me the same blue black cedar rising jaggedly to a point;
+Over it, the same slow unlidding of twin stars,
+Two eyes unfathomable, soul-searing,
+Watching, watching--watching me;
+The same two eyes that draw me forth, against my will dusk after dusk;
+The same two eyes that keep me sitting late into the night, chin on knees,
+Keep me there lonely, rigid, tearless, numbly miserable,--The eyes of my
+ Regret.
+
+
+GRASS FINGERS
+
+Touch me, touch me,
+Little cool grass fingers,
+Elusive, delicate grass fingers.
+With your shy brushings,
+Touch my face--
+My naked arms--
+My thighs--
+My feet.
+Is there nothing that is kind?
+You need not fear me.
+Soon I shall be too far beneath you,
+For you to reach me, even,
+With your tiny, timorous toes.
+
+
+SURRENDER
+
+We ask for peace. We, at the bound
+O life, are weary of the round
+In search of Truth. We know the quest
+Is not for us, the vision blest
+Is meant for other eyes. Uncrowned,
+We go, with heads bowed to the ground,
+And old hands, gnarled and hard and browned.
+Let us forget the past unrest,--
+ We ask for peace.
+
+Our strainéd ears are deaf,--no sound
+May reach them more; no sight may wound
+Our worn-out eyes. We gave our best,
+And, while we totter down the West,
+Unto that last, that open mound,--
+ We ask for peace.
+
+
+THE WAYS O’ MEN
+
+’Tis queer, it is, the ways o’ men,
+Their comin’s and their goin’s;
+For there’s the grey road,
+ The straight road
+With the grey dust liftin’
+ With ev’ry step
+And the little roads off-flingin’.
+
+Maybe it’s a bit of a sly field
+That crooks a finger to them
+And sends them to the turnin’;
+Or the round firm bosom
+ Of a little hill
+Acallin’ to them, them with their heads
+ That heavy;
+Or maybe it’s the black look
+ Given out of the tail of the eye;
+Or a white word, wingin’;
+Maybe it’s only the back of a little tot’s neck
+ In the sunlight;
+Or the red lips of a woman
+ Parting slow....
+ Sure there’s no tellin’.
+
+One I saw goin’ towards a white star
+ At the edge of a daffydill sky,
+ Its lights kissin’ straight into his eyes.
+Maybe it’s a gold piece
+To be taken from another
+ In the dark;
+Or the neat place between the ribs
+Waitin’ for the knife
+That one comes after carryin’ for it.
+’Tis few, it is, that goes with the grey road
+ The straight road
+ All the way,
+With the grey dust liftin’ at ev’ry step.
+
+’Tis queer, it is, the ways o’ men,
+With a level look at you, or a crooked
+ As they be passin’.
+ Pouf!
+Sure, ’tis so fast they’re goin’,
+Does it matter about the turnin’s?
+
+
+TENEBRIS
+
+There is a tree, by day,
+That, at night,
+Has a shadow,
+A hand huge and black,
+With fingers long and black.
+ All through the dark,
+Against the white man’s house,
+ In the little wind,
+The black hand plucks and plucks
+ At the bricks.
+The bricks are the color of blood and very small.
+ Is it a black hand,
+ Or is it a shadow?
+
+
+WHEN THE GREEN LIES OVER
+THE EARTH
+
+When the green lies over the earth, my dear,
+A mantle of witching grace,
+When the smile and the tear of the young child year
+Dimple across its face,
+And then flee, when the wind all day is sweet
+With the breath of growing things,
+When the wooing bird lights on restless feet
+And chirrups and trills and sings
+ To his lady-love
+ In the green above,
+Then oh! my dear, when the youth’s in the year,
+Yours is the face that I long to have near,
+ Yours is the face, my dear.
+
+But the green is hiding your curls, my dear,
+Your curls so shining and sweet;
+And the gold-hearted daisies this many a year
+Have bloomed and bloomed at your feet,
+And the little birds just above your head
+With their voices hushed, my dear,
+For you have sung and have prayed and have pled
+ This many, many a year.
+
+ And the blossoms fall,
+ On the garden wall,
+And drift like snow on the green below.
+ But the sharp thorn grows
+ On the budding rose,
+And my heart no more leaps at the sunset glow.
+For oh! my dear, when the youth’s in the year,
+Yours is the face that I long to have near,
+Yours is the face, my dear.
+
+
+A MONA LISA
+
+
+1.
+
+I should like to creep
+Through the long brown grasses
+ That are your lashes;
+I should like to poise
+ On the very brink
+Of the leaf-brown pools
+ That are your shadowed eyes;
+I should like to cleave
+ Without sound,
+Their glimmering waters,
+ Their unrippled waters,
+I should like to sink down
+ And down
+ And down ...
+ And deeply drown.
+
+
+2.
+
+Would I be more than a bubble breaking?
+ Or an ever-widening circle
+ Ceasing at the marge?
+Would my white bones
+ Be the only white bones
+Wavering back and forth, back and forth
+ In their depths?
+
+
+PARADOX
+
+When face to face we stand
+ And eye to eye,
+How far apart we are----As
+far, they say, as God can ever be
+From what, they say, is Hell.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+But, when we stand
+Fronting the other,
+Mile after mile slipping in between,
+O, close we are,
+As close as is the shadow to the body,
+As breath, to life, ............
+As kisses are to love.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+YOUR HANDS
+
+ I love your hands:
+They are big hands, firm hands, gentle hands;
+Hair grows on the back near the wrist ...
+I have seen the nails broken and stained
+From hard work.
+And yet, when you touch me,
+I grow small ....... and quiet ........
+....... And happy ..........
+If I might only grow small enough
+To curl up into the hollow of your palm,
+Your left palm,
+Curl up, lie close and cling,
+So that I might know myself always there,
+....... Even if you forgot.
+
+
+I WEEP
+
+ --I weep--
+Not as the young do noisily,
+Not as the aged rustily,
+ But quietly.
+Drop by drop the great tears
+Splash upon my hands,
+And save you saw them shine,
+ You would not know
+ I wept.
+
+
+FOR THE CANDLE LIGHT
+
+The sky was blue, so blue that day
+ And each daisy white, so white,
+O, I knew that no more could rains fall grey
+ And night again be night.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+I _knew_, I _knew_. Well, if night is night,
+ And the grey skies greyly cry,
+I have in a book for the candle light,
+ A daisy dead and dry.
+
+
+DUSK
+
+Twin stars through my purpling pane,
+ The shriveling husk
+Of a yellowing moon on the wane--
+ And the dusk.
+
+
+THE PUPPET PLAYER
+
+Sometimes it seems as though some puppet player
+ A clenched claw cupping a craggy chin,
+Sits just beyond the border of our seeing,
+ Twitching the strings with slow sardonic grin.
+
+
+A WINTER TWILIGHT
+
+A silence slipping around like death,
+Yet chased by a whisper, a sigh, a breath;
+One group of trees, lean, naked and cold,
+Inking their crests ’gainst a sky green-gold;
+One path that knows where the corn flowers were;
+Lonely, apart, unyielding, one fir;
+And over it softly leaning down,
+One star that I loved ere the fields went brown.
+
+
+
+
+ANNE SPENCER
+
+
+From Lynchburg, Va., where she lives, Anne Spencer
+writes, “Mother Nature, February, forty-five years ago
+forced me on the stage that I, in turn, might assume the
+rôle of lonely child, happy wife, perplexed mother--and,
+so far, a twice resentful grandmother. I have no academic
+honors, nor lodge regalia. I am a Christian by intention,
+a Methodist by inheritance, and a Baptist by marriage. I
+write about some of the things I love. But have no civilized
+articulation for the things I hate. I proudly love
+being a Negro woman--it’s so involved and interesting.
+_We_ are the PROBLEM--the great national game of
+TABOO.”
+
+
+NEIGHBORS
+
+Ah, you are cruel;
+You ask too much;
+Offered a hand, a finger-tip,
+You must have a soul to clutch.
+
+
+I HAVE A FRIEND
+
+ I have a friend
+And my heart from hence
+Is closed to friendship,
+Nor the gods’ knees hold but one;
+He watches with me thru the long night,
+And when I call he comes,
+Or when he calls I am there;
+He does not ask me how beloved
+Are my husband and children,
+Nor ever do I require
+Details of life and love
+In the grave--his home,--
+ We are such friends.
+
+
+SUBSTITUTION
+
+Is Life itself but many ways of thought,
+Does _thinking_ furl the poets’ pleiades,
+Is in His slightest convolution wrought
+These mantled worlds and their men-freighted seas?
+He thinks--and being comes to ardent things:
+The splendor of the day-spent sun, love’s birth,--
+Or dreams a little, while creation swings
+The circle of His mind and Time’s full girth ...
+As here within this noisy peopled room
+My thought leans forward ... quick! you’re lifted clear
+Of brick and frame to moonlit garden bloom,--
+Absurdly easy, now, our walking, dear,
+Talking, my leaning close to touch your face ...
+His All-Mind bids us keep this sacred place!
+
+
+QUESTING
+
+Let me learn now where Beauty is;
+My day is spent too far toward night
+To wander aimlessly and miss her place;
+To grope, eyes shut, and fingers touching space.
+
+Her maidens I have known, seen durance beside,
+Handmaidens to the Queen, whose duty bids
+Them lie and lure afield their Vestal’s acolyte,
+Lest a human shake the throne, lest a god should know his might:
+Nereid, daughter of the Trident, steering in her shell,
+Paused in voyage, smile beguiling, tempted and I fell;
+Spiteful dryads, sport forsaking, tossing birchen wreathes,
+Left the Druidic priests they teased so
+In the oaken trees, crying, “Ho a mortal! here a believer!”
+Bound me, she who held the sceptre, stricken by her, ah, deceiver ...
+But let me learn now where Beauty is;
+I was born to know her mysteries,
+And needing wisdom I must go in vain:
+Being sworn bring to some hither land,
+Leaf from her brow, light from her torchéd hand.
+
+
+LIFE-LONG, POOR BROWNING ...
+
+Life-long, poor Browning never knew Virginia,
+Or he’d not grieved in Florence for April sallies
+Back to English gardens after Euclid’s linear:
+Clipt yews, Pomander Walks, and pleachéd alleys;
+
+Primroses, prim indeed, in quite ordered hedges,
+Waterways, soberly, sedately enchanneled,
+No thin riotous blade even among the sedges,
+All the wild country-side tamely impaneled ...
+
+Dead, now, dear Browning, lives on in heaven,--
+(Heaven’s Virginia when the year’s at its Spring)
+He’s haunting the byways of wine-aired leaven
+And throating the notes of the wildings on wing;
+
+Here canopied reaches of dogwood and hazel,
+Beech tree and redbud fine-laced in vines,
+Fleet clapping rills by lush fern and basil,
+Drain blue hills to lowlands scented with pines ...
+
+Think you he meets in this tender green sweetness
+Shade that was Elizabeth ... immortal completeness!
+
+
+DUNBAR
+
+Ah, how poets sing and die!
+Make one song and Heaven takes it;
+Have one heart and Beauty breaks it;
+Chatterton, Shelley, Keats and I--
+Ah, how poets sing and die!
+
+
+INNOCENCE
+
+She tripped and fell against a star,
+A lady we all have known;
+Just what the villagers lusted for
+To claim her one of their own;
+Fallen but once the lower felt she,
+So turned her face and died,--
+With never a hounding fool to see
+’Twas a star-lance in her side!
+
+
+CREED
+
+If my garden oak spares one bare ledge
+For a boughed mistletoe to grow and wedge;
+And all the wild birds this year should know
+I cherish their freedom to come and go;
+If a battered worthless dog, masterless, alone,
+Slinks to my heels, sure of bed and bone;
+And the boy just moved in, deigns a glance-assay,
+Turns his pockets inside out, calls, “Come and play!”
+If I should surprise in the eyes of my friend
+That the deed was _my_ favor he’d let me lend;
+Or hear it repeated from a foe I despise,
+That I whom he hated was chary of lies;
+If a pilgrim stranger, fainting and poor,
+Followed an urge and rapped at my door,
+And my husband loves me till death puts apart,
+Less as flesh unto flesh, more as heart unto heart:
+I may challenge God when we meet That Day,
+And He dare not be silent or send me away.
+
+
+LINES TO A NASTURTIUM
+
+(A lover muses)
+
+Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa,
+I saw a daring bee, today, pause, and soar,
+ Into your flaming heart;
+Then did I hear crisp, crinkled laughter
+As the furies after tore him apart?
+ A bird, next, small and humming,
+Looked into your startled depths and fled....
+Surely, some dread sight, and dafter
+ Than human eyes as mine can see,
+Set the stricken air waves drumming
+ In his flight.
+
+Day-torch, Flame-flower, cool-hot Beauty,
+I cannot see, I cannot hear your flutey
+Voice lure your loving swain,
+But I know one other to whom you are in beauty
+Born in vain:
+Hair like the setting sun,
+Her eyes a rising star,
+Motions gracious as reeds by Babylon, bar
+All your competing;
+Hands like, how like, brown lilies sweet,
+Cloth of gold were fair enough to touch her feet ...
+Ah, how the sense floods at my repeating,
+_As once in her fire-lit heart I felt the furies_
+Beating, beating.
+
+
+AT THE CARNIVAL
+
+Gay little Girl-of-the-Diving-Tank,
+I desire a name for you,
+Nice, as a right glove fits;
+For you--who amid the malodorous
+Mechanics of this unlovely thing,
+Are darling of spirit and form.
+I know you--a glance, and what you are
+Sits-by-the-fire in my heart.
+My Limousine-Lady knows you, or
+Why does the slant-envy of her eye mark
+Your straight air and radiant inclusive smile?
+Guilt pins a fig-leaf; Innocence is its own adorning.
+The bull-necked man knows you--this first time
+His itching flesh sees form divine and vibrant health,
+And thinks not of his avocation.
+I came incuriously--
+Set on no diversion save that my mind
+Might safely nurse its brood of misdeeds
+In the presence of a blind crowd.
+The color of life was gray.
+Everywhere the setting seemed right
+For my mood!
+Here the sausage and garlic booth
+Sent unholy incense skyward;
+There a quivering female-thing
+Gestured assignations, and lied
+To call it dancing;
+There, too, were games of chance
+With chances for none;
+But oh! the Girl-of-the-Tank, at last!
+Gleaming Girl, how intimately pure and free
+The gaze you send the crowd,
+As though you know the dearth of beauty
+In its sordid life.
+We need you--my Limousine-Lady,
+The bull-necked man, and I.
+Seeing you here brave and water-clean,
+Leaven for the heavy ones of earth,
+I am swift to feel that what makes
+The plodder glad is good; and
+Whatever is good is God.
+The wonder is that you are here;
+I have seen the queer in queer places,
+But never before a heaven-fed
+Naiad of the Carnival-Tank!
+Little Diver, Destiny for you,
+Like as for me, is shod in silence;
+Years may seep into your soul
+The bacilli of the usual and the expedient;
+I implore Neptune to claim his child to-day!
+
+
+
+
+MARY EFFIE LEE NEWSOME
+
+
+Born in Philadelphia January 19, 1885. Daughter of
+Bishop B. F. and Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Lee. Reared in
+Ohio, at Wilberforce. Married 1920, Rev. Henry Nesby
+Newsome. Is a lover of the out-of-doors, and of the
+beautiful.
+
+
+MORNING LIGHT[10]
+
+(The Dew-Drier)
+
+Brother to the firefly--
+For as the firefly lights the night,
+So lights he the morning--
+Bathed in the dank dews as he goes forth
+Through heavy menace and mystery
+Of half-waking tropic dawn,
+Behold a little boy,
+A naked black boy,
+Sweeping aside with his slight frame
+Night’s pregnant tears,
+And making a morning path to the light
+For the tropic traveler!
+
+
+2
+
+Bathed in the blood of battle,
+Treading toward a new morning,
+May not his race--
+Its body long bared to the world’s disdain,
+Its face schooled to smile for a light to come--
+May not his race, even as the Dew Boy leads,
+Bear onward the world to a time
+When tolerance, forbearance,
+Such as reigned in the heart of ONE
+Whose heart was gold
+Shall shape the world for that fresh dawning
+After the dews of blood?
+
+
+PANSY
+
+Oh, the blue blue bloom
+On the velvet cheek
+Of the little pansy’s face
+That hides away so still and cool
+In some soft garden place!
+The tiger lily’s orange fires,
+The red lights from the rose
+Aren’t like the gloom on that blue cheek
+Of the softest flower that grows!
+
+
+SASSAFRAS TEA
+
+The sass’fras tea is red and clear
+In my white china cup,
+So pretty I keep peeping in
+Before I drink it up.
+
+I stir it with a silver spoon,
+And sometimes I just hold
+A little tea inside the spoon,
+Like it was lined with gold.
+
+It makes me hungry just to smell
+The nice hot sass’fras tea,
+And that’s one thing I really like
+That they say’s good for me.
+
+
+SKY PICTURES
+
+Sometimes a right white mountain
+Or great soft polar bear,
+Or lazy little flocks of sheep
+Move on in the blue air.
+The mountains tear themselves like floss,
+The bears all melt away.
+The little sheep will drift apart
+In such a sudden way.
+And then new sheep and mountains come.
+New polar bears appear
+And roll and tumble on again
+Up in the skies so clear.
+The polar bears would like to get
+Where polar bears belong.
+The mountains try so hard to stand
+In one place firm and strong.
+The little sheep all want to stop
+And pasture in the sky,
+But never can these things be done,
+Although they try and try!
+
+
+THE QUILT
+
+I have the greatest fun at night,
+When casement windows are all bright.
+I make believe each one’s a square
+Of some great quilt up in the air.
+
+The blocks of gold have black between,
+Wherever only night is seen.
+It surely makes a mammoth quilt--
+With bits of dark and checks of gilt--
+To cover up the tired day
+In such a cozy sort of way.
+
+
+THE BAKER’S BOY
+
+The baker’s boy delivers loaves
+All up and down our street.
+His car is white, his clothes are white,
+White to his very feet.
+I wonder if he stays that way.
+I don’t see how he does all day.
+I’d like to watch him going home
+When all the loaves are out.
+His clothes must look quite different then,
+At least I have no doubt.
+
+
+WILD ROSES
+
+What! Roses growing in a meadow
+Where all the cattle browse?
+I’d think they’d fear the very shadow
+Of daddy’s big rough cows.
+
+
+QUOITS
+
+In wintertime I have such fun
+When I play quoits with father.
+I beat him almost every game.
+He never seems to bother.
+
+He looks at mother and just smiles.
+All this seems strange to me,
+For when he plays with grown-up folks,
+He beats them easily.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[10] (This poem, published in the CRISIS during the World War, was
+written after reading an account of the little African babies who are
+sent before the explorer into jungle grasses that tower many feet. The
+little boys, Dan Crawford says in his THINKING BLACK, who go out to
+tread down a path and by chance meet the lurking leopard or hyena are
+“Human Brooms,” and are called DEW-DRIERS.)
+
+
+
+
+JOHN FREDERICK MATHEUS
+
+
+“I was born September 10, 1887, in Keyser, West Virginia.
+My early education was received in Steubenville,
+Ohio, my mother’s home. I was graduated from High
+School in 1905. For one year thereafter I was bookkeeper
+and helper in a plumbing shop.
+
+Proceeding to Cleveland, Ohio, I entered Adelbert College
+of Western Reserve University. In 1910 I won the
+A.B. degree _cum laude_ and a wife.
+
+I lived for a time in Philadelphia then began service
+in the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College at
+Tallahassee, as teacher, first of Mathematics, then of Latin
+and English. Later I became Professor of Romance
+Languages. During the war and after, I served as the
+college auditor and secretary.
+
+In 1921 I received the M.A. Degree from Columbia University
+and the Teachers College Diploma as teacher of
+French. In 1922 I became professor of Romance Languages
+in the West Virginia Collegiate Institute, Institute,
+West Virginia.
+
+In 1924 I traveled in Cuba; in 1925 I studied at the
+University of Paris during the summer and toured Switzerland,
+Italy and southern France.
+
+My interest in letters began early in grammar school
+days. The daily papers of my home town used to print
+my puerile efforts when copy ran low.
+
+Recently I have been the recipient of prizes and mention
+in the three annual _Opportunity_ Literary Contests
+and in the 1926 _Crisis_ contest, for short stories, personal
+sketches, a play and poems. The 1925 _Opportunity_ prize
+story ‘Fog’ is published in the _New Negro_, edited by
+Alain Locke.”
+
+
+REQUIEM
+
+She wears, my beloved, a rose upon her head.
+Walk softly angels, lest your gentle tread
+Awake her to the turmoil and the strife,
+The dissonance and hates called life.
+
+She sleeps, my beloved, a rose upon her head.
+Who says she will not hear, that she is dead?
+The rose will fade and lose its lovely hue,
+But not, my beloved, will fading wither you.
+
+
+
+
+FENTON JOHNSON
+
+
+“I came into the world May 7, 1888. No notice was
+taken of the event save in immediate circles. I presume
+the world was too busy or preoccupied to note it. It happened
+in Chicago. I went to school and also college. My
+scholastic record never attained me any notoriety.
+
+Taught school one year and repented. Having scribbled
+since the age of nine, had some plays produced on the
+stage of the old Pekin Theatre, Chicago, at the time I
+was nineteen. When I was twenty-four my first volume
+_A Little Dreaming_ was published. Since then _Visions of
+the Dusk_ (1915) and _Songs of the Soil_ (1916) represent
+my own collections of my work. Also published a volume
+of short stories _Tales of Darkest America_ and a group
+of essays on American politics _For the Highest Good_.
+Work in poetry appears in the following anthologies: _The
+New Poetry_ (Monroe and Henderson), _Victory_ (Braithwaite),
+_Others_ (Kreymborg), _The Chicago Anthology_
+(Blanden), _Anthology of Magazine Verse_ (Braithwaite),
+_Poetry by American Negroes_ (White and Jackson), _Negro
+Poets and their Poetry_ (Kerlin), _Poets of America_
+(Wood), _Book of American Negro Poetry_ (J. W. Johnson),
+_Today’s Poetry_ (Crawford and O’Neil) and others.
+
+Edited two or three magazines and published one or
+two of them myself.
+
+My complete autobiography I promise to the world when
+I am able to realize that I have done something.”
+
+
+WHEN I DIE
+
+When I die my song shall be
+Crooning of the summer breeze;
+When I die my shroud shall be
+Leaves plucked from the maple trees;
+On a couch as green as moss
+And a bed as soft as down,
+I shall sleep and dream my dream
+Of a poet’s laurel crown.
+
+When I die my star shall drop
+Singing like a nightingale;
+When I die my soul shall rise
+Where the lyre-strings never fail;
+In the rose my blood shall lie,
+In the violet the smile,
+And the moonbeams thousand strong
+Past my grave each night shall file.
+
+
+PUCK GOES TO COURT
+
+I went to court last night,
+Before me firefly light;
+And there was Lady Mab,
+On cheek a cunning dab
+Of rouge the sun sent down,
+King Oberon with crown
+Of gold eyed daisy buds
+Among potato spuds
+Was dancing roundelay
+With Lady Chloe and May.
+
+I hid among the flowers
+And spent the wee young hours
+In mixing up the punch;
+For I was on a hunch
+That sober men are dull
+And fairy dust will lull
+To rest the plodding mind
+Worn down by life’s thick grind.
+
+The nobles drank the brew
+And called it sweetest dew;
+But when I left they lay
+Stunned by the light of day
+And Oberon had writ
+Decree that I must flit
+A hundred leagues from court.
+(Alas! Where is there sport?)
+
+
+THE MARATHON RUNNER
+
+If I have run my course and seek the pearls
+My Psyche fain would drink at Mermelon
+And rest content in wine and nectar cup
+Who knows but that the gods have found me whole
+And in their stewardship of man would bless
+The sweating lover fickle man once knew?
+
+I know that I might pull the tendon bands
+That hold my soul together--ay, might bend
+Each nerve and muscle spirit fain would keep--
+That I might hear the maddening cheers of men
+Who when the morrow dawns forget the games
+And cast instead the dice in market place.
+
+But I have found sweeter peace than fame;
+And in the evening dwell on heights divine,
+Betwixt my lips a rose from Cupid’s hands,
+Upon my brow the laurel Belvidere
+Entwines from tree beside the throne of Zeus
+And flowing from my speech Athene’s words
+Dipped long in wisdom’s fount to heal the soul.
+
+
+
+
+JESSIE FAUSET
+
+
+“Philadelphia where I was born and educated was once
+the dear delight of my heart. But everything in my life
+has contrived to pull me away from it. First I travelled
+to Cornell University and came back with a Phi Beta
+Kappa key and a degree of Bachelor of Arts. That
+launched me. Since then I’ve seen England, Scotland,
+France, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Austria and Algeria.
+The College de France and the Alliance Francaise have
+given me some points on the difference between the French
+of Stratford-atte-Bowe and that of Paris. And there was
+a pleasant year too at the University of Pennsylvania when
+I renewed my acquaintance with Philadelphia and earned
+a Master’s Degree. So much for education. As to occupations
+I’ve taught Latin and French in the Dunbar High
+School in Washington, D. C. And served as Literary
+Editor on the _Crisis_ in New York.
+
+Wonderful days those! Now I’m teaching French again
+in the City of New York which at present claims my love
+and allegiance. Like the French I am fond of dancing,
+and adore cards and the theatre probably because I am a
+minister’s daughter. All my life I have wanted to write
+novels and have had one published. But usually, in spite
+of myself, I have scribbled poetry.... I should like to
+see the West Indies, South America and Tunis and live a
+long time on the French Riviera. Aside from this I have
+few desires. And I find life perpetually enchanting.”
+
+
+WORDS! WORDS!
+
+How did it happen that we quarreled?
+We two who loved each other so!
+Only the moment before we were one,
+Using the language that lovers know.
+And then of a sudden, a word, a phrase
+That struck at the heart like a poignard’s blow.
+And you went berserk, and I saw red,
+And love lay between us, bleeding and dead!
+Dead! When we’d loved each other so!
+
+How _could_ it happen that we quarreled!
+Think of the things we used to say!
+“What does it matter, dear, what you do?
+Love such as ours has to last for aye!”
+--“Try me! I long to endure your test!”
+--“Love, we shall always love, come what may!”
+What are the words the apostle saith?
+“In the power of the tongue are Life and Death!”
+Think of the things we used to say!
+
+
+TOUCHÉ
+
+Dear, when we sit in that high, placid room,
+“Loving” and “doving” as all lovers do,
+Laughing and leaning so close in the gloom,--
+
+What is the change that creeps sharp over you?
+Just as you raise your fine hand to my hair,
+Bringing that glance of mixed wonder and rue?
+
+“Black hair,” you murmur, “so lustrous and rare,
+Beautiful too, like a raven’s smooth wing;
+Surely no gold locks were ever more fair.”
+
+Why do you say every night that same thing?
+Turning your mind to some old constant theme,
+Half meditating and half murmuring?
+
+Tell me, that girl of your young manhood’s dream,
+Her you loved first in that dim long ago--
+Had _she_ blue eyes? Did _her_ hair goldly gleam?
+
+Does _she_ come back to you softly and slow,
+Stepping wraith-wise from the depths of the past?
+Quickened and fired by the warmth of our glow?
+
+There I’ve divined it! My wit holds you fast.
+Nay, no excuses; ’tis little I care.
+I knew a lad in my own girlhood’s past,--
+Blue eyes he had and such waving gold hair!
+
+
+NOBLESSE OBLIGE
+
+Lolotte, who attires my hair,
+Lost her lover. Lolotte weeps;
+Trails her hand before her eyes;
+Hangs her head and mopes and sighs,
+Mutters of the pangs of hell.
+Fills the circumambient air
+With her plaints and her despair.
+Looks at me:
+“May you never know, Mam’selle,
+Love’s harsh cruelty.”
+
+Love’s dart lurks in my heart too,--
+None may know the smart
+Throbbing underneath my smile.
+Burning, pricking all the while
+That I dance and sing and spar,
+Juggling words and making quips
+To hide the trembling of my lips.
+I must laugh
+What time I moan to moon and star
+To help me stand the gaff.
+
+What a silly thing is pride!
+Lolotte bares her heart.
+Heedless that each runner reads
+All her thoughts and all her needs.
+What I hide with my soul’s life
+Lolotte tells with tear and cry.
+Blurs her pain with sob and sigh.
+Happy Lolotte, she!
+I must jest while sorrow’s knife
+Stabs in ecstasy.
+
+“If I live, I shall outlive.”
+Meanwhile I am barred
+From expression of my pain.
+Let my heart be torn in twain,
+Only I may know the truth.
+Happy Lolotte, blessed she
+Who may tell her agony!
+On me a seal is set.
+Love is lost, and--bitter ruth--
+Pride is with me yet!
+
+
+LA VIE C’EST LA VIE
+
+On summer afternoons I sit
+Quiescent by you in the park,
+And idly watch the sunbeams gild
+And tint the ash-trees’ bark.
+
+Or else I watch the squirrels frisk
+And chaffer in the grassy lane;
+And all the while I mark your voice
+Breaking with love and pain.
+
+I know a woman who would give
+Her chance of heaven to take my place;
+To see the love-light in your eyes,
+The love-glow on your face!
+
+And there’s a man whose lightest word
+Can set my chilly blood afire;
+Fulfilment of his least behest
+Defines my life’s desire.
+
+But he will none of me. Nor I
+Of you. Nor you of her. ’Tis said
+The world is full of jests like these.--
+I wish that I were dead.
+
+
+THE RETURN
+
+I that had found the way so smooth
+With gilly-flowers that beck and nod,
+Now find that same road wild and steep
+With need for compass and for rod.
+And yet with feet that bleed, I pant
+On blindly,--stumbling back to God!
+
+
+RENCONTRE
+
+My heart that was so passionless
+Leapt high last night when I saw you!
+Within me surged the grief of years
+And whelmed me with its endless rue.
+My heart that slept so still, so spent,
+Awoke last night,--to break anew!
+
+
+FRAGMENT
+
+The breath of life imbued those few dim days!
+Yet all we had was this,--
+A flashing smile, a touch of hands, and once
+A fleeting kiss.
+
+Blank futile death inheres these years between!
+Still naught have you and I
+But frozen tears, and stifled words, and once
+A sharp caught cry.
+
+
+
+
+ALICE DUNBAR NELSON
+
+
+Born Alice Ruth Moore, in New Orleans, Louisiana.
+Educated in public schools and Straight College in New
+Orleans. Afterwards studied at University of Pennsylvania,
+Cornell University and School of Industrial Art.
+Married to Paul Laurence Dunbar in 1898. Taught
+school prior to marriage in New Orleans, and Brooklyn.
+One of the founders of the White Rose Industrial Home
+in New York, and the Industrial School for Colored Girls
+in Delaware. At present teaching in Delaware.
+
+Published _Violets and Other Tales_, _The Goodness of
+St. Rocque_, _Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence_, _The Dunbar
+Speaker_, and _The Negro in Louisiana_. Contributor
+to magazines and newspapers, as short story writer and
+columnist.
+
+Married to Robert John Nelson, 1916.
+
+
+SNOW IN OCTOBER
+
+Today I saw a thing of arresting poignant beauty:
+A strong young tree, brave in its Autumn finery
+Of scarlet and burnt umber and flame yellow,
+Bending beneath a weight of early snow,
+Which sheathed the north side of its slender trunk,
+And spread a heavy white chilly afghan
+Over its crested leaves.
+Yet they thrust through, defiant, glowing,
+Claiming the right to live another fortnight,
+Clamoring that Indian Summer had not come,
+Crying “Cheat! Cheat!” because Winter had stretched
+Long chill fingers into the brown, streaming hair
+Of fleeing October.
+
+The film of snow shrouded the proud redness of the tree,
+As premature grief grays the strong head
+Of a virile, red-haired man.
+
+
+SONNET
+
+I had no thought of violets of late,
+The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
+In wistful April days, when lovers mate
+And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
+The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,
+And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
+And garish lights, and mincing little fops
+And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.
+So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
+I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;
+The perfect loveliness that God has made,--
+Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
+And now--unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
+Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.
+
+
+I SIT AND SEW
+
+I sit and sew--a useless task it seems,
+My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams--
+The panoply of war, the martial tread of men,
+Grim-faced, stern-eyed, gazing beyond the ken
+Of lesser souls, whose eyes have not seen Death
+Nor learned to hold their lives but as a breath--
+But--I must sit and sew.
+
+I sit and sew--my heart aches with desire--
+That pageant terrible, that fiercely pouring fire
+On wasted fields, and writhing grotesque things
+Once men. My soul in pity flings
+Appealing cries, yearning only to go
+There in that holocaust of hell, those fields of woe--
+But--I must sit and sew.--
+
+The little useless seam, the idle patch;
+Why dream I here beneath my homely thatch,
+When there they lie in sodden mud and rain,
+Pitifully calling me, the quick ones and the slain?
+You need me, Christ! It is no roseate dream
+That beckons me--this pretty futile seam,
+It stifles me--God, must I sit and sew?
+
+
+
+
+GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON
+
+
+Many years ago a little yellow girl in Atlanta, Georgia,
+came across a poem in a current paper that told of a rose
+struggling to bloom in a window in New York City. A
+child tended this flower and her whole life was wrapt up
+in its fate. This poem was written by William Stanley
+Braithwaite, years before the world knew how marvellous
+was his mind. Some one told the reader of these lines
+that the writer was colored and straightway she began to
+walk upward toward him.
+
+This little girl grew up, went to Atlanta University,
+Oberlin Conservatory, taught school, then married Henry
+Lincoln Johnson, always looking forward toward the light
+of the poet Braithwaite.
+
+Then her husband was appointed Recorder of Deeds
+under Taft and she was moved by circumstances to the
+capital--Washington.
+
+Dean Kelly Miller at Howard University saw some of
+her poetic efforts and was pleased. Stanley Braithwaite
+was his friend and he directed her to send something to
+him at Boston. She did so, and then began a quickening
+and a realization that she could do!
+
+Following this happy event, Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois of
+the _Crisis_ brought out two poems from her pen that awakened
+the interest of readers.
+
+At this time Jessie Fauset, the novelist, was teaching
+French in Washington and very generously helped her to
+gather together material for her first book _The Heart of
+A Woman_ with an introduction by William Stanley Braithwaite.
+This was followed by _Bronze_, a book of color with
+an introduction by W. E. B. Du Bois. Her third attempt
+in poetry was _An Autumn Love Cycle_ with an introduction
+by Alain Locke, the editor of _The New Negro_.
+
+At present she is connected with the Department of
+Labor at Washington, as Commissioner of Conciliation.
+At her home there you may find the young writers gathered
+together almost any Saturday night exchanging ideas, reciting
+new poems or discussing plans for new creations.
+
+
+SERVICE
+
+When we count out our gold at the end of the day,
+And have filtered the dross that has cumbered the way,
+Oh, what were the hold of our treasury then
+Save the love we have shown to the children of men?
+
+
+HOPE
+
+Frail children of sorrow, dethroned by a hue,
+The shadows are flecked by the rose sifting through,
+The world has its motion, all things pass away,
+No night is omnipotent, there must be day.
+
+The oak tarries long in the depth of the seed,
+But swift is the season of nettle and weed,
+Abide yet awhile in the mellowing shade,
+And rise with the hour for which you were made.
+
+The cycle of seasons, the tidals of man
+Revolve in the orb of an infinite plan,
+We move to the rhythm of ages long done,
+And each has his hour--to dwell in the sun!
+
+
+THE SUPPLIANT
+
+Long have I beat with timid hands upon life’s leaden door,
+Praying the patient, futile prayer my fathers prayed before,
+Yet I remain without the close, unheeded and unheard,
+And never to my listening ear is borne the waited word.
+
+Soft o’er the threshold of the years there comes this counsel cool:
+The strong demand, contend, prevail; the beggar is a fool!
+
+
+LITTLE SON
+
+The very acme of my woe,
+ The pivot of my pride,
+My consolation, and my hope
+ Deferred, but not denied.
+The substance of my every dream,
+ The riddle of my plight,
+The very world epitomized
+ In turmoil and delight.
+
+
+OLD BLACK MEN
+
+They have dreamed as young men dream
+ Of glory, love and power;
+They have hoped as youth will hope
+ Of life’s sun-minted hour.
+
+They have seen as others saw
+ Their bubbles burst in air,
+And they have learned to live it down
+ As though they did not care.
+
+
+LETHE
+
+I do not ask for love, ah! no,
+ Nor friendship’s happiness,
+These were relinquished long ago;
+ I search for something less.
+
+I seek a little tranquil bark
+ In which to drift at ease
+Awhile, and then quite silently
+ To sink in quiet seas.
+
+
+PROVING
+
+Were you a leper bathed in wounds
+ And by the world denied;
+I’d share your fatal exile
+ As a privilege and pride.
+You are to me the sun, the moon,
+ The starlight of my soul,
+The sounding motif of my heart,
+ The impetus and goal!
+
+
+I WANT TO DIE WHILE
+YOU LOVE ME
+
+I want to die while you love me,
+ While yet you hold me fair,
+While laughter lies upon my lips
+ And lights are in my hair.
+
+I want to die while you love me
+ And bear to that still bed
+Your kisses turbulent, unspent
+ To warm me when I’m dead.
+
+I want to die while you love me;
+ Oh, who would care to live
+Till love has nothing more to ask
+ And nothing more to give?
+
+I want to die while you love me,
+ And never, never see
+The glory of this perfect day
+ Grow dim, or cease to be!
+
+
+RECESSIONAL
+
+Consider me a memory, a dream that passed away;
+Or yet a flower that has blown and shattered in a day;
+For passion sleeps alas and keeps no vigil with the years
+And wakens to no conjuring of orisons or tears.
+
+Consider me a melody that served its simple turn,
+Or but the residue of fire that settles in the urn,
+For love defies pure reasoning and undeterred flows
+Within, without, the vassal heart--its reasoning who knows?
+
+
+MY LITTLE DREAMS
+
+I’m folding up my little dreams
+ Within my heart tonight,
+And praying I may soon forget
+ The torture of their sight.
+
+For time’s deft fingers scroll my brow
+ With fell relentless art--
+I’m folding up my little dreams
+ Tonight, within my heart.
+
+
+WHAT NEED HAVE I FOR
+MEMORY?
+
+What need have I for memory,
+ When not a single flower
+Has bloomed within life’s desert
+ For me, one little hour?
+
+What need have I for memory
+ Whose burning eyes have met
+The corse of unborn happiness
+ Winding the trail regret?
+
+
+WHEN I AM DEAD
+
+When I am dead, withhold, I pray, your blooming legacy;
+Beneath the willows did I bide, and they should cover me;
+I longed for light and fragrance, and I sought them far and near,
+O, it would grieve me utterly, to find them on my bier!
+
+
+THE DREAMS OF THE DREAMER
+
+The dreams of the dreamer
+ Are life-drops that pass
+The break in the heart
+ To the soul’s hour-glass.
+
+The songs of the singer
+ Are tones that repeat
+The cry of the heart
+ Till it ceases to beat.
+
+
+THE HEART OF A WOMAN
+
+The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
+As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
+Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam
+In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
+
+The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
+And enters some alien cage in its plight,
+And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
+While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.
+
+
+
+
+CLAUDE McKAY
+
+
+“I was born in a very little village high up in the
+hills of the parish of Clarendon in the island of Jamaica.
+The village was so small it hadn’t a name like the larger
+surrounding villages. But our place was called Sunny
+Ville. I was the youngest of eleven.
+
+My father was a peasant proprietor who owned his land
+and cultivated large tracts of coffee, cocoa, bananas and
+sugar-cane. When I was of school age I was sent to my
+brother who was a schoolmaster in a small town in the
+North-Western part of the island. He educated me. He
+was a free-thinker and I became one, too, so soon as I
+could think about life and religion. I was never a child
+of any church. My brother had a nice library with books
+of all sorts and I read such free-thought writers as
+Haeckel, Huxley, Matthew Arnold, side by side with
+Shakespeare and the great English novelists and poets
+(excepting Browning) before I was fourteen. At that
+time Shakespeare to me was only a wonderful story-teller.
+When I was seventeen I won a Jamaica Government Trade
+Scholarship and was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker and
+wheelwright. I hated trade and quit. When I was nineteen
+I joined the Jamaica Constabulary and left it after
+ten months. An English gentleman who was collecting
+Jamaica folklore became interested in my dialect verses
+and helped me to publish my first book: _Songs of Jamaica_,
+in 1911. I was twenty years old then. The next year
+I went to the United States. First to an educational institution
+for Negroes in the South. I did not like it, and
+left there after three months for a college in a Western
+state. There I stayed two years. Came to New York.
+Abandoned all thought of returning to the West Indies.
+Lost a few thousand dollars (a legacy) in high living and
+bad business. Went to work at various jobs, porter,
+houseman, longshoreman, bar-man, railroad club and hotel
+waiter. Kept on writing. The _Seven Arts Magazine_ took
+two of my poems in 1917. In 1918 Frank Harris published
+some poems in _Pearson’s_. In 1919 _The Liberator_
+published some things. The same year I went to Holland,
+Belgium and England. Lived in London over a year.
+Published _Spring in New Hampshire_. Returned to America
+in 1921. Got a job with Max Eastman on the _Liberator_.
+Kept it till Max Eastman left for Europe. Went
+to Russia in 1922. _Harlem Shadows_ published 1922 by
+Harcourt, Brace & Co. Stayed six months in Moscow and
+Petrograd. Berlin in 1923. Paris at the end of 1923,
+where I was very ill for months. Been in France ever
+since trying to exist and write.”
+
+
+AMERICA[11]
+
+Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
+And sinks into my throat her tiger’s tooth,
+Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
+I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!
+Her vigor flows like tides into my blood,
+Giving me strength erect against her hate.
+Her bigness sweeps my being like a flood.
+Yet as a rebel fronts a king in state,
+I stand within her walls with not a shred
+Of terror, malice, not a word of jeer.
+Darkly I gaze into the days ahead,
+And see her might and granite wonders there,
+Beneath the touch of Time’s unerring hand,
+Like priceless treasures sinking in the sand.
+
+_Claude McKay_
+
+
+EXHORTATION: SUMMER, 1919[12]
+
+Through the pregnant universe rumbles life’s terrific thunder,
+ And Earth’s bowels quake with terror; strange and terrible storms break,
+Lightning-torches flame the heavens, kindling souls of men, thereunder:
+ Africa! long ages sleeping, O my motherland, awake!
+
+In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking,
+ And its golden glory fills the western skies.
+ O my brothers and my sisters, wake! arise!
+For the new birth rends the old earth and the very dead are waking,
+ Ghosts are turned flesh, throwing off the grave’s disguise,
+ And the foolish, even children, are made wise;
+For the big earth groans in travail for the strong, new world in making--
+ O my brothers, dreaming for dim centuries,
+ Wake from sleeping; to the East turn, turn your eyes!
+
+Oh the night is sweet for sleeping, but the shining day’s for working;
+ Sons of the seductive night, for your children’s children’s sake,
+From the deep primeval forests where the crouching leopard’s lurking,
+ Lift your heavy-lidded eyes, Ethiopia! awake!
+
+In the East the clouds glow crimson with the new dawn that is breaking,
+ And its golden glory fills the western skies.
+ O my brothers and my sisters, wake! arise!
+For the new birth rends the old earth and the very dead are waking,
+ Ghosts are turned flesh, throwing off the grave’s disguise,
+ And the foolish, even children, are made wise;
+For the big earth groans in travail for the strong, new world in making--
+ O my brothers, dreaming for long centuries,
+ Wake from sleeping; to the East turn, turn your eyes!
+
+
+FLAME-HEART[13]
+
+So much have I forgotten in ten years,
+ So much in ten brief years! I have forgot
+What time the purple apples come to juice,
+ And what month brings the shy forget-me-not.
+I have forgot the special, startling season
+ Of the pimento’s flowering and fruiting;
+What time of year the ground doves brown the fields
+ And fill the noonday with their curious fluting.
+I have forgotten much, but still remember
+The poinsettia’s red, blood-red in warm December.
+
+I still recall the honey-fever grass,
+ But cannot recollect the high days when
+We rooted them out of the ping-wing path
+ To stop the mad bees in the rabbit pen.
+I often try to think in what sweet month
+ The languid painted ladies used to dapple
+The yellow by-road mazing from the main,
+ Sweet with the golden threads of the rose-apple.
+I have forgotten--strange--but quite remember
+The poinsettia’s red, blood-red in warm December.
+
+What weeks, what months, what time of the mild year
+ We cheated school to have our fling at tops?
+What days our wine-thrilled bodies pulsed with joy
+ Feasting upon blackberries in the copse?
+Oh, some I know! I have embalmed the days,
+ Even the sacred moments when we played,
+All innocent of passion, uncorrupt,
+ At noon and evening in the flame-heart’s shade.
+We were so happy, happy, I remember,
+Beneath the poinsettia’s red in warm December.
+
+
+THE WILD GOAT[14]
+
+O you would clothe me in silken frocks
+ And house me from the cold,
+And bind with bright bands my glossy locks,
+ And buy me chains of gold.
+
+And give me--meekly to do my will--
+ The hapless sons of men:--
+But the wild goat bounding on the barren hill
+ Droops in the grassy pen.
+
+
+RUSSIAN CATHEDRAL
+
+Bow down my soul in worship very low
+And in the holy silences be lost.
+Bow down before the marble man of woe,
+Bow down before the singing angel host.
+What jewelled glory fills my spirit’s eye!
+What golden grandeur moves the depths of me!
+The soaring arches lift me up on high
+Taking my breath with their rare symmetry.
+
+Bow down my soul and let the wondrous light
+Of beauty bathe thee from her lofty throne,
+Bow down before the wonder of man’s might.
+Bow down in worship, humble and alone;
+Bow lowly down before the sacred sight
+Of man’s divinity alive in stone.
+
+
+DESOLATE
+
+My spirit is a pestilential city,
+With misery triumphant everywhere,
+Glutted with baffled hopes and lost to pity;
+Strange agonies make quiet lodgment there.
+Its bursting sewers ooze up from below,
+And spread their loathsome substance through its lanes,
+Flooding all areas with their evil flow,
+And blocking all the motion of its veins.
+Its life is sealed to love or hope or pity;
+My spirit is a pestilential city.
+
+Above its walls the air is heavy-wet,
+Brooding in fever mood and hanging thick
+Round empty tower and broken minaret,
+Settling upon the tree-tops stricken sick
+And withered in its dank contagious breath;
+Their leaves are shrivelled silver, parched decay,
+Like wilting creepers trailing underneath
+The chalky yellow of a tropic way.
+Round crumbling tower and leaning minaret,
+The air hangs fever-filled and heavy-wet.
+
+And all its many fountains no more spurt;
+Within the dammed-up tubes they tide and foam
+Around the drifting sludge and silted dirt,
+And weep against the soft and liquid loam,
+And so the city’s ways are washed no more;
+All is neglected and decayed within.
+Clean waters beat against its high-walled shore
+In furious force, but cannot enter in.
+The suffocated fountains cannot spurt;
+They foam and weep against the silted dirt.
+
+Beneath the ebon gloom of mounting rocks
+The little pools lie poisonously still.
+And birds come to the edge in forlorn flocks,
+And utter sudden plaintive notes and shrill,
+Pecking at fatty grey-green substances;
+But never do they dip their bills and drink.
+They twitter sad, beneath the mournful trees,
+And fretfully flit to and from the brink,
+In little dull brown, green-and-purple flocks,
+Beneath the jet-gloom of the mounting rocks.
+
+And green-eyed moths of curious design,
+With gold-black wings and brightly silver-dotted,
+On nests of flowers among those rocks recline--
+Bold, burning blossoms, strangely leopard-spotted,
+But breathing deadly poison at the lips.
+Oh, every lovely moth that wanders by,
+And on the blossoms fatal nectar sips,
+Is doomed in drooping stupor there to die--All
+green-eyed moths of curious design
+That on the fiercely-burning rocks recline.
+
+Oh cold as death is all the loveliness
+That breathes out of the strangeness of the scene,
+And sickening like a skeleton’s caress,
+With clammy clinging fingers, long and lean.
+Above it float a host of yellow flies,
+Circling in changeless motion in their place,
+Snow-thick and mucid in the drooping skies,
+Swarming across the glassy floor of space.
+Oh cold as death is all the loveliness
+And sickening like a skeleton’s caress.
+
+There was a time when, happy with the birds,
+The little children clapped their hands and laughed;
+And midst the clouds the glad winds heard their words,
+And blew down all the merry ways to waft
+Their music to the scented fields of flowers.
+Oh sweet were children’s voices in those days,
+Before the fall of pestilential showers,
+That drove them forth from all the city’s ways.
+Now never, never more their silver words
+Will mingle with the golden of the birds.
+
+Gone, gone forever the familiar forms
+To which my spirit once so dearly clung,
+Blown worlds beyond by the destroying storms,
+And lost away like lovely songs unsung.
+Yet life still lingers, questioningly strange,
+Timid and quivering, naked and alone,
+Biding the cycle of disruptive change,
+Though all the fond familiar forms are gone
+Forever gone, the fond familiar forms,
+Blown worlds beyond by the destroying storms.
+
+
+ABSENCE[15]
+
+Your words dropped into my heart like pebbles into a pool,
+Rippling around my breast and leaving it melting cool.
+
+Your kisses fell sharp on my flesh like dawn-dews from the limb
+Of a fruit-filled lemon tree when the day is young and dim.
+
+Like soft rain-christened sunshine, as fragile as rare gold lace,
+Your breath, sweet-scented and warm, has kindled my tranquil face.
+
+But a silence vasty-deep, oh deeper than all these ties
+Now, through the menacing miles, brooding between us lies.
+
+And more than the songs I sing, I await your written word,
+To stir my fluent blood as never your presence stirred.
+
+
+MY HOUSE
+
+For this peculiar tint that paints my house
+Peculiar in an alien atmosphere
+Where other houses wear a kindred hue,
+I have a stirring always very rare
+And romance-making in my ardent blood,
+That channels through my body like a flood.
+
+I know the dark delight of being strange,
+The penalty of difference in the crowd,
+The loneliness of wisdom among fools,
+Yet never have I felt but very proud,
+Though I have suffered agonies of hell,
+Of living in my own peculiar cell.
+
+There is an exaltation of man’s life,
+His hidden life, that he alone can feel.
+The blended fires that heat his veins within,
+Shaping his metals into finest steel,
+Are elements from his own native earth,
+That the wise gods bestowed on him at birth.
+
+Oh each man’s mind contains an unknown realm
+Walled in from other men however near,
+And unimagined in their highest flights
+Of comprehension or of vision clear;
+A realm where he withdraws to contemplate
+Infinity and his own finite state.
+
+Thence he may sometimes catch a god-like glimpse
+Of mysteries that seem beyond life’s bar;
+Thence he may hurl his little shaft at heaven
+And bring down accidentally a star,
+And drink its foamy dust like sparkling wine
+And echo accents of the laugh divine.
+
+Then he may fall into a drunken sleep
+And wake up in his same house painted blue
+Or white or green or red or brown or black--
+His house, his own, whatever be the hue.
+But things for him will not be what they seem
+To average men since he has dreamt his dream!
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[11] From “Harlem Shadows” by Claude McKay, Copyright 1922, by
+Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc.
+
+[12] From “Harlem Shadows” by Claude McKay, Copyright 1922, by
+Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc.
+
+[13] From “Harlem Shadows” by Claude McKay, Copyright 1922, by
+Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc.
+
+[14] From “Harlem Shadows” by Claude McKay, Copyright 1922, by
+Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc.
+
+[15] From "Harlem Shadows" by Claude McKay, Copyright 1922, by
+Harcourt, Brace & Company, Inc.
+
+
+
+
+JEAN TOOMER
+
+
+Jean Toomer was born in Washington, D. C., in 1894.
+He has since lived there and in New York, receiving his
+education mainly in these cities. Having traveled over a
+good part of America, experiencing varied aspects of its
+life and studying the elements of contemporary problems,
+in 1918 in the midst of a general interest in art, he gradually
+centered on that of literature. There followed a
+four year period devoted entirely to writing, the results
+of which were first given printed form by _The Double
+Dealer_ of New Orleans. And soon thereafter, sketches,
+poems, short stories, and critical reviews began appearing
+in _Broom_, _The Crisis_, _The Dial_, _The Liberator_, _The Little
+Review_, _Opportunity_, etc. These brought him in contact
+with a literary and artistic group in New York composed
+of such men as Waldo Frank, Alfred Steiglitz, Paul Rosenfeld,
+Gorham B. Munson, and others. With these he has
+been associated in the effort to articulate the diverse significances
+of America. In 1923 his first book, _Cane_, was
+published by Boni and Liveright, New York.
+
+
+REAPERS
+
+Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones
+Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones
+In their hip-pockets as a thing that’s done,
+And start their silent swinging, one by one.
+Black horses drive a mower through the weeds,
+And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds,
+His belly close to ground. I see the blade,
+Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade.
+
+
+EVENING SONG
+
+Full moon rising on the waters of my heart,
+Lakes and moon and fires,
+Cloine tires,
+Holding her lips apart.
+
+Promises of slumber leaving shore to charm the moon,
+Miracle made vesper-keeps,
+Cloine sleeps,
+And I’ll be sleeping soon.
+
+Cloine, curled like the sleepy waters where the moon-waves start,
+Radiant, resplendently she gleams,
+Cloine dreams,
+Lips pressed against my heart.
+
+
+GEORGIA DUSK
+
+The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue
+ The setting sun, too indolent to hold
+ A lengthened tournament for flashing gold,
+Passively darkens for night’s barbecue,
+
+A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,
+ An orgy for some genius of the South
+ With blood-hot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth,
+Surprised in making folk-songs from soul sounds.
+
+The sawmill blows its whistle, buzz-saws stop,
+ And silence breaks the bud of knoll and hill,
+ Soft settling pollen where plowed lands fulfill
+Their early promise of bumper crop.
+
+Smoke from the pyramidal sawdust pile
+ Curls up, blue ghosts of trees, tarrying low
+ Where only chips and stumps are left to show
+The solid proof of former domicile.
+
+Meanwhile, the men, with vestiges of pomp,
+ Race memories of king and caravan,
+ High-priests, an ostrich, and a juju-man,
+Go singing through the footpaths of the swamp.
+
+Their voices rise ... the pine trees are guitars,
+ Strumming, pine-needles fall like sheets of rain ...
+ Their voices rise ... the chorus of the cane
+Is caroling a vesper to the stars ...
+
+O singers, resinous and soft your songs
+ Above the sacred whisper of the pines,
+ Give virgin lips to cornfield concubines,
+Bring dreams of Christ to dusky cane-lipped throngs.
+
+
+SONG OF THE SON
+
+Pour O pour that parting soul in song,
+O pour it in the sawdust glow of night,
+Into the velvet pine-smoke air to-night,
+And let the valley carry it along.
+And let the valley carry it along.
+
+O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree,
+So scant of grass, so profligate of pines,
+Now just before an epoch’s sun declines,
+Thy son, in time, I have returned to thee,
+Thy son, I have in time returned to thee.
+
+In time, for though the sun is setting on
+A song-lit race of slaves, it has not set;
+Though late, O soil, it is not too late yet
+To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving, soon gone,
+Leaving, to catch thy plaintive soul soon gone.
+
+O Negro slaves, dark purple ripened plums,
+Squeezed, and bursting in the pine-wood air,
+Passing, before they stripped the old tree bare
+One plum was saved for me, one seed becomes
+
+An everlasting song, a singing tree,
+Caroling softly souls of slavery,
+What they were, and what they are to me,
+Caroling softly souls of slavery.
+
+
+COTTON SONG
+
+Come, brother, come. Let’s lift it;
+Come now, hewit! roll away!
+Shackles fall upon the Judgment Day
+But let’s not wait for it.
+
+God’s body’s got a soul,
+Bodies like to roll the soul,
+Can’t blame God if we don’t roll,
+Come, brother, roll, roll!
+
+Cotton bales are the fleecy way
+Weary sinner’s bare feet trod,
+Softly, softly to the throne of God,
+“We ain’t agwine t’ wait until th’ Judgment Day!
+
+Nassur; nassur,
+Hump.
+Eoho, eoho, roll away!
+We ain’t agwine t’ wait until th’ Judgment Day!”
+
+God’s body’s got a soul,
+Bodies like to roll the soul,
+Can’t blame God if we don’t roll,
+Come, brother, roll, roll!
+
+
+FACE
+
+Hair--
+silver-gray,
+like streams of stars,
+Brows--
+recurved canoes
+quivered by the ripples blown by pain,
+Her eyes--mist
+of tears
+condensing on the flesh below
+And her channeled muscles
+are cluster grapes of sorrow
+purple in the evening sun
+nearly ripe for worms.
+
+
+NOVEMBER COTTON FLOWER
+
+Boll-weevil’s coming, and the winter’s cold,
+Made cotton-stalks look rusty, seasons old,
+And cotton, scarce as any southern snow,
+Was vanishing; the branch, so pinched and slow,
+Failed in its function as the autumn rake;
+Drouth fighting soil had caused the soil to take
+All water from the streams; dead birds were found
+In wells a hundred feet below the ground--
+Such was the season when the flower bloomed.
+Old folks were startled, and it soon assumed
+Significance. Superstition saw
+Something it had never seen before:
+Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear,
+Beauty so sudden for that time of year.
+
+
+
+
+JOSEPH S. COTTER, JR.
+
+
+“At Thanksgiving time 1894 Paul Laurence Dunbar,
+the Negro poet, was a guest in my house in Louisville, Ky.
+Here for the first time in the South he read the Negro
+dialect poems that afterwards made him famous.
+
+September 2nd, 1895, my son, the late Joseph S. Cotter,
+Jr., was born in the room in which these poems were read.
+He learned to read and write from his sister, Florence
+Olivia, who was two years older. Before he entered school
+at the age of six years he had read about thirty books--these
+included all the readers in the elementary schools--1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8th
+grades and parts of the Bible.
+
+Mrs. Maria F. Cotter, my wife, and I held both children
+back. We refused to allow them to be promoted in several
+instances. Both were graduated from the Louisville Central
+High School under 16; Florence Olivia won first honor
+of her class and Joseph the second. He was graduated
+June 1911. After a year and a half at Fisk University,
+Nashville, Tenn., Florence Olivia wrote us that Joseph
+had tuberculosis and must leave school. He returned home
+and was put under a doctor. The 16th of the following
+December, Florence Olivia returned from Fisk with tuberculosis,
+and one year from that day she died. It was
+grieving over his sister’s death that discovered to Joseph
+his poetic talent. He died February 3rd, 1919, leaving
+his published poems,--_The Band of Gideon_ and two
+other unpublished works--one of poems and one of one-act
+plays.”
+
+_Joseph S. Cotter, Sr._
+
+
+RAIN MUSIC
+
+On the dusty earth-drum
+ Beats the falling rain;
+Now a whispered murmur,
+ Now a louder strain.
+
+Slender, silvery drumsticks.
+ On an ancient drum,
+Beat the mellow music
+ Bidding life to come.
+
+Chords of earth awakened,
+ Notes of greening spring,
+Rise and fall triumphant
+ Over every thing.
+
+Slender, silvery drumsticks
+ Beat the long tattoo--
+God, the Great Musician,
+ Calling life anew.
+
+
+SUPPLICATION
+
+I am so tired and weary,
+ So tired of the endless fight,
+So weary of waiting the dawn
+ And finding endless night.
+
+That I ask but rest and quiet--
+ Rest for the days that are gone,
+And quiet for the little space
+ That I must journey on.
+
+
+AN APRIL DAY
+
+On such a day as this I think,
+ On such a day as this,
+When earth and sky and nature’s whole
+ Are clad in April’s bliss;
+And balmy zephyrs gently waft
+ Upon your cheek a kiss;
+Sufficient is it just to live
+ On such a day as this.
+
+
+THE DESERTER
+
+I know not why or whence he came
+ Or how he chanced to go;
+I only know he brought me love
+ And going, left me woe.
+
+I do not ask that he turn back,
+ Nor seek where he may rove;
+For where woe rules can never be
+ The dwelling place of love.
+
+For love went out the door of hope,
+ And on and on has fled;
+Caring no more to dwell within
+ The house where faith is dead.
+
+
+AND WHAT SHALL YOU SAY?
+
+Brother, come!
+And let us go unto our God.
+And when we stand before Him
+I shall say--
+“Lord, I do not hate,
+I am hated.
+I scourge no one,
+I am scourged.
+I covet no lands,
+My lands are coveted.
+I mock no peoples,
+My people are mocked.”
+And, brother, what shall you say?
+
+
+THE BAND OF GIDEON
+
+The band of Gideon roam the sky,
+The howling wind is their war-cry,
+The thunder’s role is their trump’s peal,
+And the lightning’s flash their vengeful steel.
+ Each black cloud
+ Is a fiery steed.
+ And they cry aloud
+ With each strong deed,
+“The sword of the Lord and Gideon.”
+
+And men below rear temples high
+And mock their God with reasons why,
+And live in arrogance, sin and shame,
+And rape their souls for the world’s good name.
+ Each black cloud
+ Is a fiery steed.
+ And they cry aloud
+ With each strong deed,
+“The sword of the Lord and Gideon.”
+
+The band of Gideon roam the sky,
+And view the earth with baleful eye;
+In holy wrath they scourge the land
+With earth-quake, storm and burning brand.
+ Each black cloud
+ Is a fiery steed.
+ And they cry aloud
+ With each strong deed,
+“The sword of the Lord and Gideon.”
+
+The lightnings flash and the thunders roll,
+And “Lord have mercy on my soul,”
+Cry men as they fall on the stricken sod,
+In agony searching for their God.
+ Each black cloud
+ Is a fiery steed.
+ And they cry aloud
+ With each strong deed,
+“The sword of the Lord and Gideon.”
+
+And men repent and then forget
+That heavenly wrath they ever met,
+The band of Gideon yet will come
+And strike their tongues of blasphemy dumb.
+ Each black cloud
+ Is a fiery steed.
+ And they cry aloud
+ With each strong deed,
+“The sword of the Lord and Gideon.”
+
+
+
+
+BLANCHE TAYLOR DICKINSON
+
+
+I was born on a farm near Franklin, Kentucky, April
+15, 1896, and received my education variously ... public
+schools, Bowling Green Academy, Simmon’s University
+and Summer schools.
+
+No degree. Taught for several years in my native
+state. I am a lover of music and divide my time between
+the typewriter and piano. First published in _Franklin
+Favorite_, later, _Louisville Leader_, _Chicago Defender_,
+_Pittsburgh Courier_, _Crisis_, _Opportunity_ and _Wayfarer_. My
+favorite poets are Countee Cullen, Georgia Douglas Johnson
+and Edna St. Vincent Millay; my favorite past-time,
+walking along a crowded street. I have a hunch that I
+shall become a short story writer and my favorite exertion
+is trying to perfect my “technique.”
+
+At present I am living in Sewickley, Penna.
+
+
+THE WALLS OF JERICHO
+
+Jericho is on the inside
+Of the things the world likes best;
+“We want in,” the dark ones cried,
+“We will love it as the rest.”
+
+“Let me learn,” the dark ones say.
+They have learned that Faith must do
+More than meditate and pray
+That a boulder may fall through
+Making one large man size entrance
+Into wondrous Jericho.
+They have learned: forget the distance,
+Count no steps, nor stop to blow.
+
+Jericho still has her high wall,
+Futile barrier of Power....
+Echoed with the dark ones’ footfall
+Marching around her every hour;
+Knowledge strapped down like a knapsack
+Not cumbersome, and money
+Not too much to strain the back....
+Dark ones seeking milk and honey.
+
+Over in the city staring
+Up at us along the wall
+Are the fat ones, trembling, swearing
+There is no room there for us all!
+But there’ve been too many rounds
+Made to give the trip up here.
+Shout for joy ... hear how it sounds....
+The very walls echo with cheer!
+
+
+POEM
+
+Ah, I know what happiness is...!
+It is a timid little fawn
+Creeping softly up to me
+For one caress, then gone
+Before I’m through with it ...
+Away, like dark from dawn!
+Well I know what happiness is...!
+It is the break of day that wears
+A shining dew decked diadem ...
+An aftermath of tears.
+Fawn and dawn, emblems of joy ...
+I’ve played with them for years,
+And always they will slip away
+Into the brush of another day.
+
+
+REVELATION
+
+
+1
+
+She walked along the crowded street
+Forgetting all but that she
+Was walking as the other girls
+And dressed as carefully.
+
+The windows of the stores were frilled
+To lure femininity,
+To empty little pocketbooks
+And assuage queen vanity.
+
+And so my walker liked a dress
+Of silver and of gold,
+Draped on a bisque mannequin
+So blond and slim and bold.
+
+She took the precious metal home
+And waved her soft black hair;
+Powder, rouge and lipstick made
+Her very neat and fair.
+
+She slipped the dress on carefully,
+Her vain dream fell away....
+The mirror showed a brownskin girl
+She hadn’t seen all day!
+
+
+2
+
+“You have classic features,
+Something like Cleopatra.
+Eyes like whirlpools
+And as dangerous....
+Weeping willow eyelashes
+Shade the mighty depth
+Of your eyes. Your lips
+Are danger signals
+Which a fool like me
+Will not regard....
+But go dashing past them
+To gain a kiss ... or Death.”
+ That is what he said to me,
+I filled with a sweet and vain regret
+That Beauty, the stranger, and I had met.
+His praise was heat to drink me dry.
+So I found a stream, and with a sigh
+I stooped to drink ... ah, to see
+The cruel water reflecting me!
+Dark-eyed, thick-lipped, harsh, short hair ...
+But Lucifer saw himself, too, fair.
+
+
+THAT HILL
+
+It crawled away from ’neath my feet
+And left me standing there;
+A little at a time, went up
+An atmospheric stair.
+
+I couldn’t go for watching it,
+To see where it would stop;
+A tree sprang out and waved to me
+When it had reached the top.
+
+The tree kept nodding friendly like,
+Beckoning me to follow;
+And I went crawling up and up,
+Like it did from the hollow.
+
+Then I saw why the thing would go
+A-soaring from the dell--
+’Twas nearing Heaven every bound,
+And fleeing fast from Hell!
+
+
+TO AN ICICLE
+
+Chilled into a serenity
+As rigid as your pose
+You linger trustingly,
+But a gutter waits for you.
+Your elegance does not secure
+You favors with the sun.
+He is not one to pity fragileness.
+He thinks all cheeks should burn
+And feel how tears can run.
+
+
+FOUR WALLS
+
+Four great walls have hemmed me in.
+Four strong, high walls:
+Right and wrong,
+Shall and shan’t.
+The mighty pillars tremble when
+My conscience palls
+And sings its song--
+I can, I can’t.
+
+If for a moment Samson’s strength
+Were given me I’d shove
+Them away from where I stand;
+Free, I know I’d love
+To ramble soul and all,
+And never dread to strike a wall.
+
+Again, I wonder would that be
+Such a happy state for me ...
+The going, being, doing, sham--
+And never knowing where I am.
+I might not love freedom at all;
+My tired wings might crave a wall--
+Four walls to rise and pen me in
+This conscious world with guarded men.
+
+
+
+
+FRANK HORNE
+
+
+“Born in New York City, August 18, 1899, I have lived
+all but about six years in Brooklyn. I studied at the College
+of the City of New York, and was guilty there of my
+first sonnet; but am ever so much more proud of my varsity
+letters won on the track--once ran a “10 flat” hundred and
+a 51 sec. quarter. Went to the Northern Illinois College
+of Ophthalmology--took degree “Doctor of Optometry.”
+Have practiced in Chicago and New York. At present
+writing, am doing some teaching and publicity work at the
+Fort Valley High and Industrial School, Georgia, while
+recovering from a mean illness. Have had a hankering
+to write as long as I can remember, but Charles Johnson,
+Editor of _Opportunity_ and a certain Gwendolyn Bennett
+are responsible for my trying it openly. My “published
+works” are limited to the indulgence of _Opportunity_, _The
+Crisis_, and _Braithwaite’s Anthology_. It is the perversity
+of my nature to crave the ability to write good prose,
+and yet my attempts at poetry are the only things to which
+any notice is given.”
+
+
+ON SEEING TWO BROWN BOYS IN
+A CATHOLIC CHURCH
+
+It is fitting that you be here
+Little brown boys
+With Christ-like eyes
+And curling hair.
+
+Look you on yon crucifix
+Where He hangs nailed and pierced
+With head hung low
+And eyes a’blind with blood that drips
+From a thorny crown ...
+Look you well,
+You shall know this thing.
+
+Judas’ kiss will burn your cheek
+And you shall be denied
+By your Peter--And
+Gethsemane ...
+You shall know full well
+Gethsemane ...
+
+You, too, will suffer under Pontius Pilate
+And feel the rugged cut of rough hewn cross
+Upon your surging shoulder--
+They will spit in your face
+And laugh ...
+They will nail you up twixt thieves
+And gamble for your little garments.
+
+And in this you will exceed God
+For on this earth
+You shall know Hell--
+
+O little brown boys
+With Christ-like eyes
+And curling hair
+It is fitting that you be here.
+
+
+TO A PERSISTENT PHANTOM
+
+I buried you deeper last night
+You with your tears
+And your tangled hair
+You with your lips
+That kissed so fair
+I buried you deeper last night.
+
+I buried you deeper last night
+With fuller breasts
+And stronger arms
+With softer lips
+And newer charms
+I buried you deeper last night.
+
+Deeper ...... aye, deeper
+And again tonight
+Till that gay spirit
+That once was you
+Will tear its soul
+In climbing through ...
+Deeper ...... aye, deeper
+I buried you deeper last night.
+
+
+LETTERS FOUND NEAR A SUICIDE
+
+_To all of you_
+
+My little stone
+Sinks quickly
+Into the bosom of this deep, dark pool
+Of oblivion ...
+I have troubled its breast but little
+Yet those far shores
+That knew me not
+Will feel the fleeting, furtive kiss
+Of my tiny concentric ripples....
+
+_To Lewellyn_
+
+You have borne full well
+The burden of my friendship--
+I have drunk deep
+At your crystal pool,
+And in return
+I have polluted its waters
+With the bile of my hatred.
+I have flooded your soul
+With tortuous thoughts,
+I have played Iscariot
+To your Pythias....
+
+_To Mother_
+
+I came
+In the blinding sweep
+Of ecstatic pain,
+I go
+In the throbbing pulse
+Of aching space--
+In the eons between
+I piled upon you
+Pain on pain
+Ache on ache
+And yet as I go
+I shall know
+That you will grieve
+And want me back....
+
+_To B----_
+
+You have freed me--
+In opening wide the doors
+Of flesh
+You have freed me
+Of the binding leash.
+I have climbed the heights
+Of white disaster
+My body screaming
+In the silver crash of passion ...
+Before you gave yourself
+To him
+I had chained myself
+For you.
+But when at last
+You lowered your proud flag
+In surrender complete
+You gave me too, as hostage--
+And I have wept my joy
+At the dawn-tipped shrine
+Of many breasts.
+
+_To Jean_
+
+When you poured your love
+Like molten flame
+Into the throbbing mold
+Of her pulsing veins
+Leaving her blood a river of fire
+And her arteries channels of light,
+I hated you ...
+Hated with that primal hate
+That has its wells
+In the flesh of me
+And the flesh of you
+And the flesh of her
+I hated you--
+Hated with envy
+Your mastery of her being ...
+With one fleshy gesture
+You pricked the iridescent bubble
+Of my dreams
+And so to make
+Your conquest more sweet
+I tell you now
+That I hated you.
+
+_To Catalina_
+
+Love thy piano, Oh girl,
+It will give you back
+Note for note
+The harmonies of your soul.
+It will sing back to you
+The high songs of your heart.
+It will give
+As well as take....
+
+_To Mariette_
+
+I sought consolation
+In the sorrow of your eyes.
+You sought reguerdon
+In the crying of my heart ...
+We found that shattered dreamers
+Can be bitter hosts....
+
+_To_ ----
+
+You call it
+Death of the Spirit
+And I call it Life ...
+The vigor of vibration,
+The muffled knocks,
+The silver sheen of passion’s flood,
+The ecstasy of pain ...
+You call it
+Death of the Spirit
+And I call it Life.
+
+_To Telie_
+
+You have made my voice
+A rippling laugh
+But my heart
+A crying thing ...
+’Tis better thus:
+A fleeting kiss
+And then,
+The dark....
+
+_To “Chick”_
+
+Oh Achilles of the moleskins
+And the gridiron
+Do not wonder
+Nor doubt that this is I
+That lies so calmly here--
+This is the same exultant beast
+That so joyously
+Ran the ball with you
+In those far flung days of abandon.
+You remember how recklessly
+We revelled in the heat and the dust
+And the swirl of conflict?
+You remember they called us
+The Terrible Two?
+And you remember
+After we had battered our heads
+And our bodies
+Against the stonewall of their defense,--
+You remember the signal I would call
+And how you would look at me
+In faith and admiration
+And say “Let’s go,” ...
+How the lines would clash
+And strain,
+And how I would slip through
+Fighting and squirming
+Over the line
+To victory.
+You remember, Chick? ...
+When you gaze at me here
+Let that same light
+Of faith and admiration
+Shine in your eyes
+For I have battered the stark stonewall
+Before me ...
+I have kept faith with you
+And now
+I have called my signal,
+Found my opening
+And slipped through
+Fighting and squirming
+Over the line
+To victory....
+
+_To Wanda_
+
+To you, so far away
+So cold and aloof,
+To you, who knew me so well,
+This is my last Grand Gesture
+This is my last Great Effect
+And as I go winging
+Through the black doors of eternity
+Is that thin sound I hear
+Your applause?...
+
+
+NIGGER
+
+A Chant for Children
+
+Little Black boy
+Chased down the street--
+“Nigger, nigger never die
+Black face an’ shiney eye,
+Nigger ... nigger ... nigger....”
+
+ Hannibal ... Hannibal
+ Bangin’ thru the Alps
+ Licked the proud Romans,
+ Ran home with their scalps--
+ “Nigger ... nigger ... nigger....”
+
+ Othello ... black man
+ Mighty in war
+ Listened to Iago
+ Called his wife a whore--
+ “Nigger ... nigger ... nigger....”
+
+ Crispus ... Attucks
+ Bullets in his chest
+ Red blood of freedom
+ Runnin’ down his vest
+ “Nigger ... nigger ... nigger....”
+
+ Toussant ... Toussant
+ Made the French flee
+ Fought like a demon
+ Set his people free--
+ “Nigger ... nigger ... nigger....”
+
+ Jesus ... Jesus
+ Son of the Lord
+ --Spit in his face
+ --Nail him on a board
+ “Nigger ... nigger ... nigger ...”
+
+Little Black boy
+Runs down the street--
+“Nigger, nigger never die
+Black face an’ shiney eye,
+Nigger ... nigger ... nigger ...”
+
+
+
+
+LEWIS ALEXANDER
+
+
+Lewis Alexander was born July 4, 1900, at Washington,
+D. C. He was educated in the public schools of
+Washington and at Howard University where he was a
+member of the Howard Players. He has also studied
+at the University of Pennsylvania. He was a member of
+the Ethiopian Art Theatre for the season 1922-1923 playing
+in _Salome_ and _The Comedy of Errors_ on Broadway.
+As the result of a recent tour of North and South Carolina
+he edited in May 1927 the Negro Number of the
+_Carolina Magazine_. He has been writing poetry since
+1917, specializing in Japanese forms. Two Little Theatre
+groups in Washington, The Ira Aldridge Players of
+the Grover Cleveland School and the Randall Community
+Center Players have been under his direction.
+
+
+NEGRO WOMAN
+
+The sky hangs heavy tonight
+Like the hair of a Negro woman.
+The scars of the moon are curved
+Like the wrinkles on the brow of a Negro woman.
+
+The stars twinkle tonight
+Like the glaze in a Negro woman’s eyes,
+Drinking the tears set flowing by an aging hurt
+Gnawing at her heart.
+
+The earth trembles tonight
+Like the quiver of a Negro woman’s eye-lids cupping tears.
+
+
+AFRICA
+
+Thou art not dead, although the spoiler’s hand
+Lies heavy as death upon thee; though the wrath
+Of its accursed might is in thy path
+And has usurped thy children of their land;
+Though yet the scourges of a monstrous band
+Roam on thy ruined fields, thy trampled lanes,
+Thy ravaged homes and desolated fanes;
+Thou art not dead, but sleeping,--Motherland.
+
+A mighty country, valorous and free,
+Thou shalt outlive this terror and this pain;
+Shall call thy scattered children back to thee,
+Strong with the memory of their brothers slain;
+And rise from out thy charnel house to be
+Thine own immortal, brilliant self again!
+
+
+TRANSFORMATION
+
+I return the bitterness,
+ Which you gave to me;
+When I wanted loveliness
+ Tantalant and free.
+
+I return the bitterness
+ It is washed by tears;
+Now it is a loveliness
+ Garnished through the years.
+
+I return it loveliness,
+ Having made it so;
+For I wore the bitterness
+ From it long ago.
+
+
+THE DARK BROTHER
+
+“Lo, I am black but I am comely too,
+Black as the night, black as the deep dark caves.
+I am the scion of a race of slaves
+Who helped to build a nation strong that you
+And I may stand within the world’s full view,
+Fearless and firm as dreadnoughts on rough waves;
+Holding a banner high whose floating braves
+The opposition of the tried untrue.
+
+Casting an eye of love upon my face,
+Seeing a newer light within my eyes,
+A rarer beauty in your brother race
+Will merge upon your visioning fullwise.
+Though I am black my heart through love is pure,
+And you through love my blackness shall endure!”
+
+
+TANKA I-VIII
+
+
+I
+
+Could I but retrace
+The winding stairs fate built me.
+They fell from my feet.
+Now I stand on the high round.
+Down beneath height above depth--
+
+
+II
+
+Through the eyes of life
+I looked in at my own heart:
+A long furrowed field
+Grown cement waiting for seed
+Baking in desolation.
+
+
+III
+
+Drink in moods of joy!
+Why should the sky be lonely?
+Neither sun nor moon--
+How my heart is shy of night
+Like Autumn’s leaf brown pendants.
+
+
+IV
+
+Cold against the sky
+The blue jays cried at dawning.
+The larks where are they?
+Heavily upon the air
+My ears tuned in to listen.
+
+
+V
+
+So this is the reed?
+The very pipes for singing--
+Life plays me new songs.
+Wistfully from out the dawn
+The crows broke across the sky!
+
+
+VI
+
+And now Spring has come
+Blossoming up my garden.
+I alone unchanged.
+Moving in my house of Autumn.
+One leaf alone saves a tree.
+
+
+VII
+
+By the pool of life
+Willows are drooping tonight
+I can see no stars.
+What dances in the water?
+O my clouds dripping with tears.
+
+
+VIII
+
+Could I hear your voice
+O but this silence is sweet
+Words mar all beauty.
+Turn then into your own heart
+And pluck the roots from the soil--
+
+
+JAPANESE HOKKU
+
+O apple blossoms
+Give me your words of silence,
+Yes, your charming speech.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+If you would know me,
+Do not regard this display;
+Mingle with my speech.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Why sit like the sphinx,
+Watching the caravan pass?
+Join in the parade.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+What if the wind blows?
+What if the leaves are scattered,
+Now that they are dead?
+
+ * * * * *
+
+While trimming the plants
+I saw some flowers drooping.
+I am a flower.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+This is but my robe,
+His Majesty gave to me.
+Garments will decay.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+On the flowering twig,
+Lo! the robin is singing.
+It must be spring.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Looking up the hill
+The road was long before me.
+This road is longer.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Death is not cruel
+From what I have seen of life;
+Nothing else remains.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Life is history.
+Turn not away from the book.
+Write on every page!
+
+ * * * * *
+
+If you had not sung
+Then what would I imitate,
+Happy nightingale?
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Sitting by the pool,
+I looked in and saw my face.
+O that I were blind!
+
+
+DAY AND NIGHT
+
+The day is a Negro
+ Yelling out of breath.
+The night is a Negro
+ Laughing up to death.
+
+The day is a jazz band
+ Blasting loud and wild.
+The night is a jazz band
+ Moaning Blues songs, child.
+
+The day is the sunshine
+ Undressed in the street.
+The night is the sunshine
+ Dressed from head to feet.
+
+I am like a rainbow
+ Arched across the way.
+Yes, I am a rainbow
+ Being night nor day.
+
+
+
+
+STERLING A. BROWN
+
+
+I was born in Washington, D. C., the first of May,
+1901. I received primary and secondary education in the
+Public Schools of that city, and on a farm near Laurel,
+Md.; entered Williams College in 1918, was elected to
+Phi Beta Kappa in 1921, graduated in 1922; and received
+my Master of Arts Degree at Harvard in 1923. Since that
+time I have been seeking a more liberal education teaching
+school. I have been inflicted on unsuspecting, helpless
+students; teaching diverse things at Manassas Summer
+School in Virginia, Rhetoric and Literature at Virginia
+Seminary and College, Lynchburg, Va., and Literature
+at Lincoln University, Jefferson City, Mo.
+
+From early years I have _lisped in numbers_ but the
+numbers seem improper fractions. I have always been interested
+in people, particularly and generally, and in
+books. The list runs from Homer to Housman.
+
+Except for an essay on Roland Hayes submitted to an
+_Opportunity_ contest, and occasional poems and reviews,
+I have published nothing of the voluminous works cluttering
+my desk.
+
+
+ODYSSEY OF BIG BOY
+
+Lemme be wid Casey Jones,
+ Lemme be wid Stagolee,
+Lemme be wid such like men
+ When Death takes hol’ on me,
+ When Death takes hol’ on me....
+
+Done skinned as a boy in Kentucky hills,
+ Druv steel dere as a man,
+Done stripped tobacco in Virginia fiels’
+ Alongst de River Dan,
+ Alongst de River Dan;
+
+Done mined de coal in West Virginia
+ Liked dat job jes’ fine
+Till a load o’ slate curved roun’ my head
+ Won’t work in no mo’ mine,
+ Won’t work in no mo’ mine;
+
+Done shocked de corn in Marylan,
+ In Georgia done cut cane,
+Done planted rice in South Caline,
+ But won’t do dat again
+ Do dat no mo’ again.
+
+Been roustabout in Memphis,
+ Dockhand in Baltimore,
+Done smashed up freight on Norfolk wharves
+ A fust class stevedore,
+ A fust class stevedore....
+
+Done slung hash yonder in de North
+ On de ole Fall River Line
+Done busted suds in li’l New Yawk
+ Which ain’t no work o’ mine--
+ Lawd, ain’t no work o’ mine;
+
+Done worked and loafed on such like jobs
+ Seen what dey is to see
+Done had my time with a pint on my hip
+ An’ a sweet gal on my knee
+ Sweet mommer on my knee:
+
+Had stovepipe blonde in Macon
+ Yaller gal in Marylan
+In Richmond had a choklit brown
+ Called me huh monkey man--
+ Huh big fool monkey man.
+
+Had two fair browns in Arkansaw
+ And three in Tennessee
+Had Creole gal in New Orleans
+ Sho Gawd did two time me--
+ Lawd two time, fo’ time me--
+
+But best gal what I evah had
+ Done put it over dem
+A gal in Southwest Washington
+ At Four’n half and M--
+ Four’n half and M....
+
+Done took my livin’ as it came
+ Done grabbed my joy, done risked my life
+Train done caught me on de trestle
+ Man done caught me wid his wife
+ His doggone purty wife ...
+
+I done had my women,
+ I done had my fun
+Cain’t do much complainin’
+ When my jag is done,
+ Lawd, Lawd, my jag is done.
+
+An’ all dat Big Boy axes
+ When time comes fo’ to go
+Lemme be wid John Henry, steel drivin’ man
+ Lemme be wid ole Jazzbo;
+ Lemme be wid ole Jazzbo....
+
+
+MAUMEE RUTH
+
+Might as well bury her
+ And bury her deep,
+Might as well put her
+ Where she can sleep.
+
+Might as well lay her
+ Out in her shiny black;
+And for the love of God
+ Not wish her back.
+
+Maum Sal may miss her
+ Maum Sal, she only
+With no one now to scoff
+ Sal may be lonely....
+
+Nobody else there is
+ Who will be caring
+How rocky was the road
+ For her wayfaring;
+
+Nobody be heeding in
+ Cabin, or town
+That she is lying here
+ In her best gown.
+
+Boy that she suckled
+ How should he know
+Hiding in city holes
+ Sniffing the ‘snow’?
+
+And how should the news
+ Pierce Harlem’s din
+To reach her baby gal,
+ Sodden with gin?
+
+To cut her withered heart
+ They cannot come again,
+Preach her the lies about
+ Jordan and then
+
+Might as well drop her
+ Deep in the ground
+Might as well pray for her
+ That she sleep sound....
+
+
+LONG GONE
+
+I laks yo’ kin’ of lovin’
+ Ain’t never caught you wrong
+But it jes ain’ nachal
+ Fo’ to stay here long;
+
+It jes ain’ nachal
+ Fo’ a railroad man
+With a itch fo’ travellin’
+ He cain’t understan’....
+
+I looks at de rails
+ An’ I looks at de ties,
+An I hears an ole freight
+ Puffin’ up de rise,
+
+An’ at nights on my pallet
+ When all is still
+I listens fo’ de empties
+ Bumpin’ up de hill;
+
+When I oughta be quiet
+ I is got a itch
+Fo’ to hear de whistle blow
+ Fo’ de crossin’, or de switch,
+
+An’ I knows de time’s a nearin’
+ When I got to ride
+Though its homelike and happy
+ At yo’ side.
+
+You is done all you could do
+ To make me stay
+Tain’t no fault of yours I’se leavin’--
+ I’se jes dataway.
+
+I is got to see some people
+ I ain’ never seen
+Gotta highball thu some country
+ Whah I never been....
+
+I don’t know which way I’m travellin’--
+ Far or near,
+All I knows fo’ certain is
+ I cain’t stay here.
+
+Ain’t no call at all, sweet woman
+ Fo’ to carry on,--
+Jes my name and jes my habit
+ To be Long Gone....
+
+
+TO A CERTAIN LADY, IN HER
+GARDEN
+
+(_A. S._)
+
+Lady, my lady, come from out the garden,
+Clayfingered, dirtysmocked, and in my time
+I too shall learn the quietness of Arden,
+Knowledge so long a stranger to my rhyme.
+
+What were more fitting than your springtime task?
+Here, close engirdled by your vines and flowers
+Surely there is no other grace to ask,
+No better cloister from the bickering hours.
+
+A step beyond, the dingy streets begin
+With all their farce, and silly tragedy--But
+here, unmindful of the futile din
+You grow your flowers, far wiser certainly,
+
+You and your garden sum the same to me,
+A sense of strange and momentary pleasure,
+And beauty snatched--oh, fragmentarily
+Perhaps, yet who can boast of other seizure?
+
+Oh, you have somehow robbed, I know not how
+The secret of the loveliness of these
+Whom you have served so long. Oh, shameless, now
+You flaunt the winnings of your thieveries.
+
+Thus, I exclaim against you, profiteer....
+For purpled evenings spent in pleasing toil,
+Should you have gained so easily the dear
+Capricious largesse of the miser soil?
+
+Colorful living in a world grown dull,
+Quiet sufficiency in weakling days,
+Delicate happiness, more beautiful
+For lighting up belittered, grimy ways--
+
+Surely I think I shall remember this,
+You in your old, rough dress, bedaubed with clay,
+Your smudgy face parading happiness,
+Life’s puzzle solved. Perhaps, in turn, you may.
+
+One time, while clipping bushes, tending vines,
+(Making your brave, sly mock at dastard days,)
+Laugh gently at these trivial, truthful lines--
+And that will be sufficient for my praise.
+
+
+SALUTAMUS
+
+(O Gentlemen the time of Life is short--Henry IV)
+
+The bitterness of days like these we know;
+Much, much we know, yet cannot understand
+What was our crime that such a searing brand
+Not of our choosing, keeps us hated so.
+Despair and disappointment only grow,
+Whatever seeds are planted from our hand,
+What though some roads wind through a gladsome land?
+It is a gloomy path that we must go.
+
+And yet we know relief will come some day
+For these seared breasts; and lads as brave again
+Will plant and find a fairer crop than ours.
+It must be due our hearts, our minds, our powers;
+These are the beacons to blaze out the way.
+_We must plunge onward; onward, gentlemen_....
+
+
+CHALLENGE
+
+I said, in drunken pride of youth and you
+That mischief-making Time would never dare
+Play his ill-humoured tricks upon us two,
+Strange and defiant lovers that we were.
+I said that even Death, Highwayman Death,
+Could never master lovers such as we,
+That even when his clutch had throttled breath,
+My hymns would float in praise, undauntedly.
+
+I did not think such words were bravado.
+Oh, I think honestly we knew no fear,
+Of Time or Death. We loved each other so.
+And thus, with you believing me, I made
+My prophecies, rebellious, unafraid....
+And that was foolish, wasn’t it, my dear?
+
+
+RETURN
+
+I have gone back in boyish wonderment
+To things that I had foolishly put by....
+Have found an alien and unknown content
+In seeing how some bits of cloud-filled sky
+Are framed in bracken pools; through chuckling hours
+Have watched the antic frogs, or curiously
+Have numbered all the unnamed, vagrant flowers,
+That fleck the unkempt meadows, lavishly.
+
+Or where a headlong toppling stream has stayed
+Its racing, lulled to quiet by the song
+Bursting from out the thickleaved oaken shade,
+There I have lain while hours sauntered past--
+I have found peacefulness somewhere at last,
+Have found a quiet needed for so long.
+
+
+
+
+CLARISSA SCOTT DELANY
+
+
+“I was born at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, in the
+Twentieth Century, and spent my early years in what is
+known as the ‘Black Belt.’ This was followed by seven
+years in New England (1916-1923), three at Bradford
+Academy, and four at Wellesley College, where my
+southern blood became tinged with something of the austerity
+of that section. Three years of teaching in the
+Dunbar High School of Washington, D. C., convinced me
+that though the children were interesting, teaching was
+not my _metier_. In the fall of 1926 I was married. Since
+completing a study of Delinquency and Neglect among
+Negro children in New York City, my career has been
+that of a wife, and as careers go, that is an interesting
+and absorbing one.”
+
+
+JOY
+
+Joy shakes me like the wind that lifts a sail,
+Like the roistering wind
+That laughs through stalwart pines.
+It floods me like the sun
+On rain-drenched trees
+That flash with silver and green.
+
+I abandon myself to joy--
+I laugh--I sing.
+Too long have I walked a desolate way,
+Too long stumbled down a maze
+Bewildered.
+
+
+SOLACE
+
+My window opens out into the trees
+And in that small space
+Of branches and of sky
+I see the seasons pass
+Behold the tender green
+Give way to darker heavier leaves.
+The glory of the autumn comes
+When steeped in mellow sunlight
+The fragile, golden leaves
+Against a clear blue sky
+Linger in the magic of the afternoon
+And then reluctantly break off
+And filter down to pave
+A street with gold.
+Then bare, gray branches
+Lift themselves against the
+Cold December sky
+Sometimes weaving a web
+Across the rose and dusk of late sunset
+Sometimes against a frail new moon
+And one bright star riding
+A sky of that dark, living blue
+Which comes before the heaviness
+Of night descends, or the stars
+Have powdered the heavens.
+Winds beat against these trees;
+The cold, but gentle rain of spring
+Touches them lightly
+The summer torrents strive
+To lash them into a fury
+And seek to break them--
+But they stand.
+My life is fevered
+And a restlessness at times
+An agony--again a vague
+And baffling discontent
+Possesses me.
+I am thankful for my bit of sky
+And trees, and for the shifting
+Pageant of the seasons.
+Such beauty lays upon the heart
+A quiet.
+Such eternal change and permanence
+Take meaning from all turmoil
+And leave serenity
+Which knows no pain.
+
+
+INTERIM
+
+The night was made for rest and sleep,
+For winds that softly sigh;
+It was not made for grief and tears;
+So then why do I cry?
+
+The wind that blows through leafy trees
+Is soft and warm and sweet;
+For me the night is a gracious cloak
+To hide my soul’s defeat.
+
+Just one dark hour of shaken depths,
+Of bitter black despair--
+Another day will find me brave,
+And not afraid to dare.
+
+
+THE MASK
+
+So detached and cool she is
+No motion e’er betrays
+The secret life within her soul,
+The anguish of her days.
+
+She seems to look upon the world
+With cold ironic eyes,
+To spurn emotion’s fevered sway,
+To scoff at tears and sighs.
+
+But once a woman with a child
+Passed by her on the street,
+And once she heard from casual lips
+A man’s name, bitter-sweet.
+
+Such baffled yearning in her eyes,
+Such pain upon her face!
+I turned aside until the mask
+Was slipped once more in place.
+
+
+
+
+LANGSTON HUGHES
+
+
+Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, on the
+first of February, 1902. His mother was a school teacher,
+his father a lawyer. During most of his childhood he
+lived with his grandmother in Lawrence, Kansas, where
+he went to school. This old lady, Mary Sampson Patterson
+Leary Langston, was the last surviving widow of
+John Brown’s Raid, her first husband having been one
+of the five colored men to die so gloriously at Harper’s
+Ferry. She had then married Charles Langston, brother
+of the Negro senator, John M. Langston, and in the seventies
+they came to Kansas where the mother of the poet
+was born.
+
+When Langston Hughes was thirteen this grandmother
+died and the boy went to live with his mother in Lincoln,
+Illinois. A year later they moved to Cleveland where he
+attended and was graduated from the Central High School.
+Then followed fifteen months in Mexico where his father
+had been located for some years. Here the young man
+learned Spanish, taught English, and attended bull-fights.
+Here, too, he wrote “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” his
+first poem to be published in the magazines.
+
+In 1921 he went to New York for a year at Columbia
+University. A break with his father followed and he
+secured work for the summer on a truck farm on Staten
+Island. Then for almost two years he travelled as a
+member of the crew of freight steamers voyaging to the
+West Coast of Africa and Northern Europe. In February,
+1924, he went to Paris. When he arrived he had seven
+dollars in his pockets; so he soon found a job as doorman
+in a Montmartre cabaret. Later he became second cook
+and pan-cake maker at the Grand Duc, a Negro night
+club where Buddy Gilmore sometimes played and Florence
+sang. That summer he went to Italy, and September
+found him stranded in Genoa. He worked his way back
+to New York on a tramp steamer, painting and scrubbing
+decks.
+
+A year in Washington followed where he worked in the
+office of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and
+History, and later as a bus boy at the Wardman Park
+Hotel. There Vachel Lindsay read some of his poems and
+he was discovered by the newspapers. Then his first
+book, _The Weary Blues_, appeared. He has now resumed
+his formal education at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania,
+which he says is a place of beauty and the ideal
+college for a poet. His second book of poems, _Fine Clothes
+for the Jew_, is a study in racial rhythms.
+
+Lincoln University
+April 13, 1927
+
+
+I, TOO[16]
+
+I, too, sing America.
+
+
+I am the darker brother.
+They send me to eat in the kitchen
+When company comes,
+But I laugh,
+And eat well,
+And grow strong.
+
+Tomorrow,
+I’ll sit at the table
+When company comes.
+Nobody’ll dare
+Say to me,
+“Eat in the kitchen,”
+Then.
+
+Besides,
+They’ll see how beautiful I am
+And be ashamed,--
+
+I, too, am America.
+
+
+PRAYER[17]
+
+I ask you this:
+Which way to go?
+I ask you this:
+Which sin to bear?
+Which crown to put
+Upon my hair?
+I do not know,
+Lord God,
+I do not know.
+
+
+SONG FOR A DARK GIRL[18]
+
+Way down South in Dixie
+ (Break the heart of me)
+They hung my black young lover
+ To a cross roads tree.
+
+Way down South in Dixie
+ (Bruised body high in air)
+I asked the white Lord Jesus
+ What was the use of prayer.
+
+Way down South in Dixie
+ (Break the heart of me)
+Love is a naked shadow
+ On a gnarled and naked tree.
+
+
+HOMESICK BLUES[19]
+
+De railroad bridge’s
+A sad song in de air.
+De railroad bridge’s
+A sad song in de air.
+Ever time de trains pass
+I wants to go somewhere.
+
+I went down to de station.
+Ma heart was in ma mouth.
+Went down to de station.
+Heart was in ma mouth.
+Lookin’ for a box car
+To roll me to de South.
+
+Homesick blues, Lawd,
+’S a terrible thing to have.
+Homesick blues is
+A terrible thing to have.
+To keep from cryin’
+I opens ma mouth an’ laughs.
+
+
+FANTASY IN PURPLE[20]
+
+Beat the drums of tragedy for me.
+Beat the drums of tragedy and death.
+And let the choir sing a stormy song
+To drown the rattle of my dying breath.
+
+Beat the drums of tragedy for me,
+And let the white violins whir thin and slow,
+But blow one blaring trumpet note of sun
+To go with me
+ to the darkness
+ where I go.
+
+
+DREAM VARIATION[21]
+
+To fling my arms wide
+In some place of the sun,
+To whirl and to dance
+Till the white day is done.
+Then rest at cool evening
+Beneath a tall tree
+While night comes on gently,
+ Dark like me,--
+That is my dream!
+
+To fling my arms wide
+In the face of the sun,
+Dance! whirl! whirl!
+Till the quick day is done.
+Rest at pale evening....
+A tall, slim tree....
+Night coming tenderly
+ Black like me.
+
+
+THE NEGRO SPEAKS OF
+RIVERS[22]
+
+I’ve known rivers:
+I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than
+ the flow of human blood in human veins.
+
+My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
+
+I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
+I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
+I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
+I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
+ went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
+ bosom turn all golden in the sunset.
+
+I’ve known rivers:
+Ancient, dusky rivers.
+
+My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
+
+
+POEM[23]
+
+The night is beautiful,
+So the faces of my people.
+
+The stars are beautiful,
+So the eyes of my people.
+
+Beautiful, also, is the sun.
+Beautiful, also, are the souls of my people.
+
+
+SUICIDE’S NOTE[24]
+
+The calm,
+Cool face of the river
+Asked me for a kiss.
+
+
+MOTHER TO SON[25]
+
+Well, son, I’ll tell you:
+Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
+It’s had tacks in it,
+And splinters,
+And boards torn up,
+And places with no carpet on the floor--
+Bare.
+But all the time
+I’s been a-climbin’ on,
+And reachin’ landin’s,
+And turnin’ corners,
+And sometimes goin’ in the dark
+Where there ain’t been no light.
+So boy, don’t you turn back.
+Don’t you set down on the steps
+’Cause you finds it’s kinder hard.
+Don’t you fall now--
+For I’s still goin’, honey,
+I’s still climbin’,
+And life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.
+
+
+A HOUSE IN TAOS
+
+ _Rain_
+Thunder of the Rain God:
+ And we three
+ Smitten by beauty.
+
+Thunder of the Rain God:
+ And we three
+ Weary, weary.
+
+Thunder of the Rain God:
+ And you, she and I
+ Waiting for nothingness.
+
+Do you understand the stillness
+ Of this house in Taos
+Under the thunder of the Rain God?
+
+ _Sun_
+That there should be a barren garden
+About his house in Taos
+Is not so strange,
+But that there should be three barren hearts
+In this one house in Taos,--
+Who carries ugly things to show the sun?
+
+ _Moon_
+Did you ask for the beaten brass of the moon?
+We can buy lovely things with money,
+You, she and I,
+Yet you seek,
+As though you could keep,
+This unbought loveliness of moon.
+
+ _Wind_
+Touch our bodies, wind.
+Our bodies are separate, individual things.
+Touch our bodies, wind,
+But blow quickly
+Through the red, white, yellow skins
+Of our bodies
+To the terrible snarl,
+Not mine,
+Not yours,
+Not hers,
+But all one snarl of souls.
+Blow quickly, wind,
+Before we run back into the windlessness,--
+With our bodies,--
+Into the windlessness
+Of our house in Taos.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[16] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf,
+Inc., authorized publishers.
+
+[17] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf.
+Inc., authorized publishers.
+
+[18] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf,
+Inc., authorized publishers.
+
+[19] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf,
+Inc., authorized publishers.
+
+[20] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf,
+Inc., authorized publishers.
+
+[21] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf,
+Inc., authorized publishers.
+
+[22] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf,
+Inc., authorized publishers.
+
+[23] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf,
+Inc., authorized publishers.
+
+[24] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf,
+Inc., authorized publishers.
+
+[25] By permission of and special arrangement with Alfred A. Knopf,
+Inc., authorized publishers.
+
+
+
+
+GWENDOLYN B. BENNETT
+
+
+Gwendolyn B. Bennett was born in Giddings, Texas,
+on July 8th, 1902. Her father was a lawyer and her mother
+was a school teacher. She received her elementary training
+in the Public Schools of Washington, D. C., and Harrisburg,
+Pa. She was graduated from the Girls’ High
+School in Brooklyn, New York, during January, 1921.
+While she was in attendance there she was a member of
+the Felter Literary Society and the Girls’ High School
+Dramatic Society, being the first Negro girl to have been
+elected to either of these societies. In an open contest
+she was awarded the first prize for a poster bearing the
+slogan _Fresh Air Prevents Tuberculosis_.
+
+She matriculated in the Fine Arts Department of
+Teachers’ College, Columbia University, where she remained
+for two years. She then entered the Normal Art
+Course at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. She was
+the author of her class play each of the two years she
+was there. In her Junior Year she played the leading
+part in the play which she had herself written. She was
+graduated from Pratt Institute June 1924.
+
+She then became a member of the Howard University
+Faculty in Fine Arts as Instructor in Design, Water-color
+and Crafts. During the Christmas holidays of the school
+year 1924-25 Miss Bennett was awarded the Thousand
+Dollar Foreign Scholarship by the Alpha Sigma Chapter
+of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority at its Annual Convention
+held in New York City.
+
+She sailed for Cherbourg, France on June fifteenth,
+1925. While in Paris she studied at the Académie Julian,
+The Académie Coloraossi and the École de Pantheon.
+Through the influence of Konrad Bercovici she was thrown
+in contact with the artist, Frans Masereel, one of France’s
+best known modern painters. M. and Mme. Masereel
+offered Miss Bennett the hospitality of their home and
+together with their circle of friends did much to encourage
+her in her work while in Paris. She returned to America
+during June 1926.
+
+For the summer of 1926 she was employed at the _Opportunity_
+magazine where she acted in the capacity of
+Assistant to the Editor. September 1926 she returned
+to Howard University where she resumed her classroom
+work after a year’s leave of absence.
+
+
+QUATRAINS
+
+
+1
+
+Brushes and paints are all I have
+To speak the music in my soul--
+While silently there laughs at me
+A copper jar beside a pale green bowl.
+
+
+2
+
+How strange that grass should sing--
+Grass is so still a thing....
+And strange the swift surprise of snow
+So soft it falls and slow.
+
+
+SECRET
+
+I shall make a song like your hair ...
+Gold-woven with shadows green-tinged,
+And I shall play with my song
+As my fingers might play with your hair.
+Deep in my heart
+I shall play with my song of you,
+_Gently_....
+I shall laugh
+At its sensitive lustre ...
+I shall wrap my song in a blanket,
+Blue like your eyes are blue
+With tiny shots of silver.
+I shall wrap it caressingly,
+_Tenderly_....
+I shall sing a lullaby
+To the song I have made
+Of your hair and eyes ...
+And you will never know
+That deep in my heart
+I shelter a song of you
+_Secretly_....
+
+
+ADVICE
+
+You were a sophist,
+Pale and quite remote,
+As you bade me
+Write poems--
+Brown poems
+Of dark words
+And prehistoric rhythms ...
+Your pallor stifled my poesy
+But I remembered a tapestry
+That I would some day weave
+Of dim purples and fine reds
+And blues
+Like night and death--
+The keen precision of your words
+Wove a silver thread
+Through the dusk softness
+Of my dream-stuff....
+
+
+TO A DARK GIRL
+
+I love you for your brownness
+And the rounded darkness of your breast.
+I love you for the breaking sadness in your voice
+And shadows where your wayward eye-lids rest.
+
+Something of old forgotten queens
+Lurks in the lithe abandon of your walk
+And something of the shackled slave
+Sobs in the rhythm of your talk.
+
+Oh, little brown girl, born for sorrow’s mate,
+Keep all you have of queenliness,
+Forgetting that you once were slave,
+And let your full lips laugh at Fate!
+
+
+YOUR SONGS
+
+When first you sang a song to me
+With laughter shining from your eyes,
+You trolled your music liltingly
+With cadences of glad surprise.
+
+In after years I heard you croon
+In measures delicately slow
+Of trees turned silver by the moon
+And nocturnes sprites and lovers know.
+
+And now I cannot hear you sing,
+But love still holds your melody
+For silence is a sounding thing
+To one who listens hungrily.
+
+
+FANTASY
+
+I sailed in my dreams to the Land of Night
+Where you were the dusk-eyed queen,
+And there in the pallor of moon-veiled light
+The loveliest things were seen ...
+
+A slim-necked peacock sauntered there
+In a garden of lavender hues,
+And you were strange with your purple hair
+As you sat in your amethyst chair
+With your feet in your hyacinth shoes.
+
+Oh, the moon gave a bluish light
+Through the trees in the land of dreams and night.
+I stood behind a bush of yellow-green
+And whistled a song to the dark-haired queen ...
+
+
+LINES WRITTEN AT THE GRAVE
+OF ALEXANDER DUMAS
+
+Cemeteries are places for departed souls
+And bones interred,
+Or hearts with shattered loves.
+A woman with lips made warm for laughter
+Would find grey stones and roving spirits
+Too chill for living, moving pulses ...
+And thou, great spirit, wouldst shiver in thy granite shroud
+Should idle mirth or empty talk
+Disturb thy tranquil sleeping.
+
+A cemetery is a place for shattered loves
+And broken hearts....
+Bowed before the crystal chalice of thy soul,
+I find the multi-colored fragrance of thy mind
+Has lost itself in Death’s transparency.
+
+Oh, stir the lucid waters of thy sleep
+And coin for me a tale
+Of happy loves and gems and joyous limbs
+And hearts where love is sweet!
+
+A cemetery is a place for broken hearts
+And silent thought ...
+And silence never moves,
+Nor speaks nor sings.
+
+
+HATRED
+
+I shall hate you
+Like a dart of singing steel
+Shot through still air
+At even-tide.
+Or solemnly
+As pines are sober
+When they stand etched
+Against the sky.
+Hating you shall be a game
+Played with cool hands
+And slim fingers.
+Your heart will yearn
+For the lonely splendor
+Of the pine tree;
+While rekindled fires
+In my eyes
+Shall wound you like swift arrows.
+Memory will lay its hands
+Upon your breast
+And you will understand
+My hatred.
+
+
+SONNET
+
+1
+
+He came in silvern armour, trimmed with black--
+A lover come from legends long ago--With
+silver spurs and silken plumes a-blow,
+And flashing sword caught fast and buckled back
+In a carven sheath of Tamarack.
+He came with footsteps beautifully slow,
+And spoke in voice meticulously low.
+He came and Romance followed in his track....
+
+I did not ask his name--I thought him Love;
+I did not care to see his hidden face.
+All life seemed born in my intaken breath;
+All thought seemed flown like some forgotten dove.
+He bent to kiss and raised his visor’s lace ...
+All eager-lipped I kissed the mouth of Death.
+
+
+SONNET
+
+2
+
+Some things are very dear to me--
+Such things as flowers bathed by rain
+Or patterns traced upon the sea
+Or crocuses where snow has lain ...
+The iridescence of a gem,
+The moon’s cool opalescent light,
+Azaleas and the scent of them,
+And honeysuckles in the night.
+And many sounds are also dear--
+Like winds that sing among the trees
+Or crickets calling from the weir
+Or Negroes humming melodies.
+But dearer far than all surmise
+Are sudden tear-drops in your eyes.
+
+
+
+
+ARNA BONTEMPS
+
+
+Arna Bontemps explains that he was just tall enough
+to see above window sills when the first trolley car came
+down Lee Street in Alexandria, La. His mother, Marie
+Pembroke, had been born in this same town but his father
+had come out of Marksville, a smaller town of that
+state. Though exceedingly young and very frail, Marie
+Pembroke had taught school until her marriage, while her
+husband, Paul Bontemps, was a brick mason, the son and
+grandson of brick masons.
+
+With Arna Bontemps in his third year and a second
+child, a girl, just past one, the family left the South for
+San Francisco. However, they stopped in Los Angeles
+to visit relatives and have never moved further. Here the
+boy’s mother died some nine years later and here his
+father is still living. Here also he received his early education
+in a rather irregular attendance of a number of
+schools. He went through the schools rapidly enough and
+in spite of being out several years received a college degree
+in his twentieth year.
+
+In the year following that he lost his illusions with
+reference to a musical career and returned to an original
+intention to eat bread by the sweat of teaching school.
+It is to be remembered that he went to college first with the
+purpose of taking a medical course but it took him only
+a day or two to decide better.
+
+He lives in New York City and is now twenty-four and
+married.
+
+
+THE RETURN
+
+
+I
+
+Once more, listening to the wind and rain,
+Once more, you and I, and above the hurting sound
+Of these comes back the throbbing of remembered rain,
+Treasured rain falling on dark ground.
+Once more, huddling birds upon the leaves
+And summer trembling on a withered vine.
+And once more, returning out of pain,
+The friendly ghost that was your love and mine.
+
+
+II
+
+Darkness brings the jungle to our room:
+The throb of rain is the throb of muffled drums.
+Darkness hangs our room with pendulums
+Of vine and in the gathering gloom
+Our walls recede into a denseness of
+Surrounding trees. This is a night of love
+Retained from those lost nights our fathers slept
+In huts; this is a night that must not die.
+Let us keep the dance of rain our fathers kept
+And tread our dreams beneath the jungle sky.
+
+
+III
+
+And now the downpour ceases.
+Let us go back once more upon the glimmering leaves
+And as the throbbing of the drums increases
+Shake the grass and dripping boughs of trees.
+A dry wind stirs the palm; the old tree grieves.
+
+_Time has charged the years: the old days have returned._
+
+Let us dance by metal waters burned
+With gold of moon, let us dance
+With naked feet beneath the young spice trees.
+What was that light, that radiance
+On your face?--something I saw when first
+You passed beneath the jungle tapestries?
+
+A moment we pause to quench our thirst
+Kneeling at the water’s edge, the gleam
+Upon your face is plain: you have wanted this.
+Let us go back and search the tangled dream
+And as the muffled drum-beats throb and miss
+Remember again how early darkness comes
+To dreams and silence to the drums.
+
+
+IV
+
+Let us go back into the dusk again,
+Slow and sad-like following the track
+Of blowing leaves and cool white rain
+Into the old gray dream, let us go back.
+Our walls close about us we lie and listen
+To the noise of the street, the storm and the driven birds.
+A question shapes your lips, your eyes glisten
+Retaining tears, but there are no more words.
+
+
+A BLACK MAN TALKS OF
+REAPING
+
+I have sown beside all waters in my day.
+I planted deep, within my heart the fear
+That wind or fowl would take the grain away.
+I planted safe against this stark, lean year.
+
+I scattered seed enough to plant the land
+In rows from Canada to Mexico
+But for my reaping only what the hand
+Can hold at once is all that I can show.
+
+Yet what I sowed and what the orchard yields
+My brother’s sons are gathering stalk and root,
+Small wonder then my children glean in fields
+They have not sown, and feed on bitter fruit.
+
+
+TO A YOUNG GIRL LEAVING THE
+HILL COUNTRY
+
+The hills are wroth; the stones have scored you bitterly
+Because you looked upon the naked sun
+Oblivious of them, because you did not see
+The trees you touched or mountains that you walked upon.
+
+But there will come a day of darkness in the land,
+A day wherein remembered sun alone comes through
+To mark the hills; then perhaps you’ll understand
+Just how it was you drew from them and they from you.
+
+For there will be a bent old woman in that day
+Who, feeling something of this country in her bones,
+Will leave her house tapping with a stick, who will (they say)
+Come back to seek the girl she was in these familiar stones.
+
+
+NOCTURNE AT BETHESDA
+
+I thought I saw an angel flying low,
+I thought I saw the flicker of a wing
+Above the mulberry trees; but not again.
+Bethesda sleeps. This ancient pool that healed
+A host of bearded Jews does not awake.
+This pool that once the angels troubled does not move.
+No angel stirs it now, no Saviour comes
+With healing in His hands to raise the sick
+And bid the lame man leap upon the ground.
+
+The golden days are gone. Why do we wait
+So long upon the marble steps, blood
+Falling from our open wounds? and why
+Do our black faces search the empty sky?
+Is there something we have forgotten? some precious thing
+We have lost, wandering in strange lands?
+
+There was a day, I remember now,
+I beat my breast and cried, “Wash me God,
+Wash me with a wave of wind upon
+The barley; O quiet One, draw near, draw near!
+Walk upon the hills with lovely feet
+And in the waterfall stand and speak.
+
+“Dip white hands in the lily pool and mourn
+Upon the harps still hanging in the trees
+Near Babylon along the river’s edge,
+But oh, remember me, I pray, before
+The summer goes and rose leaves lose their red.”
+
+The old terror takes my heart, the fear
+Of quiet waters and of faint twilights.
+There will be better days when I am gone
+And healing pools where I cannot be healed.
+Fragrant stars will gleam forever and ever
+Above the place where I lie desolate.
+
+Yet I hope, still I long to live.
+And if there can be returning after death
+I shall come back. But it will not be here;
+If you want me you must search for me
+Beneath the palms of Africa. Or if
+I am not there then you may call to me
+Across the shining dunes, perhaps I shall
+Be following a desert caravan.
+
+I may pass through centuries of death
+With quiet eyes, but I’ll remember still
+A jungle tree with burning scarlet birds.
+There is something I have forgotten, some precious thing.
+I shall be seeking ornaments of ivory,
+I shall be dying for a jungle fruit.
+
+ You do not hear, Bethesda.
+O still green water in a stagnant pool!
+Love abandoned you and me alike.
+There was a day you held a rich full moon
+Upon your heart and listened to the words
+Of men now dead and saw the angels fly.
+There is a simple story on your face;
+Years have wrinkled you. I know, Bethesda!
+You are sad. It is the same with me.
+
+
+LENGTH OF MOON
+
+Then the golden hour
+Will tick its last
+And the flame will go down in the flower.
+
+A briefer length of moon
+Will mark the sea-line and the yellow dune.
+
+Then we may think of this, yet
+There will be something forgotten
+And something we should forget.
+
+It will be like all things we know:
+The stone will fail; a rose is sure to go.
+
+It will be quiet then and we may stay
+As long at the picket gate
+But there will be less to say.
+
+
+LANCELOT
+
+The fruit of the orchard is over-ripe, Elaine,
+And leaves are crisping on the garden wall.
+Leaves on the garden path are wet and rain
+Drips from the low shrubs with a steady fall.
+
+It is long, so long since I was here, Elaine,
+Moles have gnawed the rose tree at its root;
+You did not think that I would come again,
+Least of all in the day of falling fruit.
+
+
+GETHSEMANE
+
+All that night I walked alone and wept.
+I tore a rose and dropped it on the ground.
+My heart was lead; all that night I kept
+Listening to hear a dreadful sound.
+
+A tree bent down and dew dripped from its hair.
+The earth was warm; dawn came solemnly.
+I stretched full-length upon the grass and there
+I said your name but silence answered me.
+
+
+A TREE DESIGN
+
+A tree is more than a shadow
+Blurred against the sky,
+More than ink spilled on the fringe
+Of white clouds floating by.
+A tree is more than an April design
+Or a blighted winter bough
+Where love and music used to be.
+A tree is something in me,
+Very still and lonely now.
+
+
+BLIGHT
+
+I have seen a lovely thing
+Stark before a whip of weather:
+The tree that was so wistful after spring
+Beating barren twigs together.
+
+The birds that came there one by one,
+The sensuous leaves that used to sway
+And whisper there at night, all are gone,
+Each has vanished in its way.
+
+And this whip is on my heart;
+There is no sound that it allows,
+No little song that I may start
+But I hear the beating of dead boughs.
+
+
+THE DAY-BREAKERS
+
+We are not come to wage a strife
+ With swords upon this hill.
+It is not wise to waste the life
+ Against a stubborn will.
+Yet would we die as some have done:
+Beating a way for the rising sun.
+
+
+CLOSE YOUR EYES!
+
+Go through the gates with closed eyes.
+Stand erect and let your black face front the west.
+Drop the axe and leave the timber where it lies;
+A woodman on the hill must have his rest.
+
+Go where leaves are lying brown and wet.
+Forget her warm arms and her breast who mothered you,
+And every face you ever loved forget.
+Close your eyes; walk bravely through.
+
+
+GOD GIVE TO MEN
+
+God give the yellow man
+An easy breeze at blossom time.
+Grant his eager, slanting eyes to cover
+Every land and dream
+Of afterwhile.
+
+Give blue-eyed men their swivel chairs
+To whirl in tall buildings.
+Allow them many ships at sea,
+And on land, soldiers
+And policemen.
+
+For black man, God,
+No need to bother more
+But only fill afresh his meed
+Of laughter,
+His cup of tears.
+
+God suffer little men
+The taste of soul’s desire.
+
+
+HOMING
+
+Sweet timber land
+Where soft winds blow
+The high green tree
+And fan away the fog!
+Ah fragrant stream
+Where thirsty creatures go
+And strong black men
+Hew the heavy log!
+
+Oh broken house
+Crumbling there alone,
+Wanting me!
+Oh silent tree
+Must I always be
+A wild bird
+Riding the wind
+And screaming bitterly?
+
+
+GOLGOTHA IS A MOUNTAIN
+
+Golgotha is a mountain, a purple mound
+Almost out of sight.
+One night they hanged two thieves there,
+And another man.
+Some women wept heavily that night;
+Their tears are flowing still. They have made a river;
+Once it covered me.
+Then the people went away and left Golgotha
+Deserted.
+Oh, I’ve seen many mountains:
+Pale purple mountains melting in the evening mists and blurring on the
+ borders of the sky.
+I climbed old Shasta and chilled my hands in its summer snows.
+I rested in the shadow of Popocatepetl and it whispered to me of daring
+ prowess.
+I looked upon the Pyrenees and felt the zest of warm exotic nights.
+I slept at the foot of Fujiyama and dreamed of legend and of death.
+And I’ve seen other mountains rising from the wistful moors like the
+ breasts of a slender maiden.
+Who knows the mystery of mountains!
+Some of them are awful, others are just lonely.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Italy has its Rome and California has San Francisco,
+All covered with mountains.
+Some think these mountains grew
+Like ant hills
+Or sand dunes.
+That might be so--
+I wonder what started them all!
+Babylon is a mountain
+And so is Ninevah,
+With grass growing on them;
+Palaces and hanging gardens started them.
+I wonder what is under the hills
+In Mexico
+And Japan!
+There are mountains in Africa too.
+Treasure is buried there:
+Gold and precious stones
+And moulded glory.
+Lush grass is growing there
+Sinking before the wind.
+Black men are bowing.
+Naked in that grass
+Digging with their fingers.
+I am one of them:
+Those mountains should be ours.
+It would be great
+To touch the pieces of glory with our hands.
+These mute unhappy hills,
+Bowed down with broken backs,
+Speak often one to another:
+“A day is as a year,” they cry,
+“And a thousand years as one day.”
+We watched the caravan
+That bore our queen to the courts of Solomon;
+And when the first slave traders came
+We bowed our heads.
+“Oh, Brothers, it is not long!
+Dust shall yet devour the stones
+But we shall be here when they are gone.”
+Mountains are rising all around me.
+Some are so small they are not seen;
+Others are large.
+All of them get big in time and people forget
+What started them at first.
+Oh the world is covered with mountains!
+Beneath each one there is something buried:
+Some pile of wreckage that started it there.
+Mountains are lonely and some are awful.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+One day I will crumble.
+They’ll cover my heap with dirt and that will make a mountain.
+I think it will be Golgotha.
+
+
+
+
+ALBERT RICE
+
+
+I am a native of our Capital City, born in the Mauve
+Decade (1903). My schooling has been in the Washington
+grammar and high schools. It was while a student at
+Dunbar High School that I felt a restless urge to write
+something other than dull formal paragraphs in English.
+I made several attempts at verse but found them so poor
+that I hastily put such ideas behind me.
+
+After leaving high school I entered the government service
+in Washington, but my radical views could not become
+reconciled to the conservative bourgeoise ideals
+around me; so I left the government service and journeyed
+to New York in the winter of 1926. Here I served an
+apprenticeship in literary vagabondage with the bizarre
+and eccentric young vagabond poet of High Harlem,
+Richard Bruce. It was here that I felt inspired to write
+“The Black Madonna.” I was one evening at vespers
+down at St. Mary’s the Virgin, and while lost in contemplation
+before Our Lady, I thought of a Madonna of
+swart skin, a Madonna of dark mien.
+
+Despite my radicalism I am religious. I admire the
+socialist form of government, and my favorite poet is
+Claude McKay. And some day I hope to flee the shores
+of this exquisite hell. My temperament is Latin. I abhor
+all things Anglo-Saxon. I’d rather live in the squalor
+of Mulberry Street, N. Y. (Little Italy) than at Irvington-on-the-Hudson.
+I love bull fights and dislike baseball
+games. I like dancing and dislike prayer meetings. I
+love New York because it is crowded and noisy and an
+outpost of Europe. Of my home here in Washington I
+have not much to offer. I like Washington because it
+has such a large share of Babbitts, both white and black.
+And I like it because Georgia Douglas Johnson lives there
+and on Saturday nights has an assembly of likable and
+civilized people, and because it was from this Saturday
+night circle that Jean Toomer, Richard Bruce, and Richard
+Goodwin, the artist, went forth to fame and infamy.
+
+
+THE BLACK MADONNA
+
+Not as the white nations
+ know thee
+ O Mother!
+
+But swarthy of cheek
+ and full-lipped as the
+ child races are.
+
+Yet thou art she,
+ the Immaculate Maid,
+ and none other,
+
+Crowned in the stable
+ at Bethlehem,
+ hailed of the star.
+
+See where they come,
+ thy people,
+ so humbly appealing,
+
+From the ancient lands
+ where the olden faiths
+ had birth.
+
+Tired dusky hands
+ uplifted for thy
+ healing.
+
+Pity them, Mother,
+ the untaught
+ of earth.
+
+
+
+
+COUNTEE CULLEN
+
+
+Born in New York City, May 30, 1903, and reared in
+the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage,
+Countee Cullen’s chief problem has been that of reconciling
+a Christian upbringing with a pagan inclination.
+His life so far has not convinced him that the problem is
+insoluble. Educated in the elementary and high schools
+of New York City, with an A.B. degree and a Phi Beta
+Kappa Key from New York University, an M.A. from
+Harvard, arrantly opposed to any form of enforced racial
+segregation, he finds it a matter of growing regret that
+no part of his academic education has been drawn from
+a racial school. As a poet he is a rank conservative, loving
+the measured line and the skillful rhyme; but not blind
+to the virtues of those poets who will not be circumscribed;
+and he is thankful indeed for the knowledge that should
+he ever desire to go adventuring, the world is rife with
+paths to choose from. He has said, perhaps with a reiteration
+sickening to some of his friends, that he wishes any
+merit that may be in his work to flow from it solely as the
+expression of a poet--with no racial consideration to bolster
+it up. He is still of the same thought. At present he
+is employed as Assistant Editor of _Opportunity, A Journal
+of Negro Life_.
+
+His published works are _Color_, _The Ballad of the Brown
+Girl_, and _Copper Sun_.
+
+
+LINES TO OUR ELDERS
+
+You too listless to examine
+If in pestilence or famine
+Death lurk least, a hungry gamin
+Gnawing on you like a beaver
+On a root, while you trifle
+Time away nodding in the sun,
+Careless how the shadows crawl
+Surely up your crumbling wall,
+Heedless of the Thief’s footfall,
+Death’s, whose nimble fingers rifle
+Your heartbeats one by weary one,--
+Here’s the difference in our dying:
+You go dawdling, we go flying.
+Here’s a thought flung out to plague you:
+Ours the pleasure if we’d liever
+Burn completely with the fever
+Than go ambling with the ague.
+
+
+I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH
+LIFE
+
+(With apologies to the memory of Alan Seeger)
+
+I have a rendezvous with Life
+In days I hope will come
+Ere youth has sped and strength of mind,
+Ere voices sweet grown dumb;
+I have a rendezvous with Life
+When Spring’s first heralds hum.
+It may be I shall greet her soon,
+Shall riot at her behest;
+It may be I shall seek in vain
+The peace of her downy breast;
+Yet I would keep this rendezvous,
+And deem all hardships sweet,
+If at the end of the long white way,
+There Life and I shall meet.
+Sure some will cry it better far
+To crown their days in sleep,
+Than face the wind, the road, and rain,
+To heed the falling deep;
+Though wet, nor blow, nor space I fear,
+Yet fear I deeply, too,
+Lest Death shall greet and claim me ere
+I keep Life’s rendezvous.
+
+
+PROTEST
+
+I long not now, a little while at least,
+For that serene interminable hour
+When I shall leave this barmecidal feast,
+With poppy for my everlasting flower.
+I long not now for that dim cubicle
+Of earth to which my lease will not expire,
+Where he who comes a tenant there may dwell
+Without a thought of famine, flood, or fire.
+
+Surely that house has quiet to bestow:
+Still tongue, spent pulse, heart pumped of its last throb,
+The fingers tense and tranquil in a row,
+The throat unwelled with any sigh or sob.
+But time to live, to love, bear pain and smile,
+Oh, we are given such a little while!
+
+
+YET DO I MARVEL
+
+I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
+And did he stoop to quibble could tell why
+The little buried mole continues blind,
+Why flesh that mirrors him must some day die,
+Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
+Is baited with the fickle fruit, declare
+If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
+To struggle up a never-ending stair.
+
+Inscrutable His ways are and immune
+To catechism by a mind too strewn
+With petty cares to slightly understand
+What awful brain compels His awful hand;
+Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
+To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
+
+
+TO LOVERS OF EARTH: FAIR
+WARNING
+
+Give over to high things the fervent thought
+You waste on Earth; let down the righteous bar
+Against a wayward peace too dearly bought
+Upon this pale and passion-frozen star.
+Sweethearts and friends, are they not loyal? Far
+More fickle, false, perverse, far more unkind,
+Is Earth to those who give her heart and mind.
+
+And you whose lusty youth her snares intrigue,
+Who glory in her seas, swear by her clouds,
+With Age, man’s foe, Earth ever is in league.
+Time resurrects her even while he crowds
+Your bloom to dust, and lengthens out your shrouds
+A day’s length or a year’s. She will be young
+When your last cracked and quivering note is sung.
+
+She will remain the Earth, sufficient still
+Though you are gone, and with you that rare loss
+That vanishes with your bewildered will;
+And there shall flame no red, indignant cross
+For you, no quick white scar of wrath emboss
+The sky, no blood drip from a wounded moon,
+And not a single star chime out of tune.
+
+
+FROM THE DARK TOWER
+
+We shall not always plant while others reap
+The golden increment of bursting fruit,
+Not always countenance, abject and mute,
+That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
+Not everlastingly while others sleep
+Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,
+Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
+We were not made eternally to weep.
+
+The night whose sable breast relieves the stark
+White stars is no less lovely, being dark;
+And there are buds that cannot bloom at all
+In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;
+So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
+And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.
+
+
+TO JOHN KEATS, POET, AT
+SPRINGTIME
+
+I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;
+There never was a spring like this;
+It is an echo, that repeats
+My last year’s song and next year’s bliss.
+I know, in spite of all men say
+Of Beauty, you have felt her most.
+Yea, even in your grave her way
+Is laid. Poor, troubled, lyric ghost,
+Spring never was so fair and dear
+As Beauty makes her seem this year.
+
+I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;
+I am as helpless in the toil
+Of Spring as any lamb that bleats
+To feel the solid earth recoil
+Beneath his puny legs. Spring beats
+Her tocsin call to those who love her,
+And lo! the dogwood petals cover
+Her breast with drifts of snow, and sleek
+White gulls fly screaming to her, and hover
+About her shoulders, and kiss her cheek,
+While white and purple lilacs muster
+A strength that bears them to a cluster
+Of color and odor; for her sake
+All things that slept are now awake.
+
+And you and I, shall we lie still,
+John Keats, while Beauty summons us?
+Somehow I feel your sensitive will
+Is pulsing up some tremulous
+Sap road of a maple tree, whose leaves
+Grow music as they grow, since your
+Wild voice is in them, a harp that grieves
+For life that opens death’s dark door.
+Though dust, your fingers still can push
+The Vision Splendid to a birth,
+Though now they work as grass in the hush
+Of the night on the broad sweet page of the earth.
+
+“John Keats is dead,” they say, but I
+Who hear your full insistent cry
+In bud and blossom, leaf and tree,
+Know John Keats still writes poetry.
+And while my head is earthward bowed
+To read new life sprung from your shroud,
+Folks seeing me must think it strange
+That merely spring should so derange
+My mind. They do not know that you,
+John Keats, keep revel with me, too.
+
+
+FOUR EPITAPHS
+
+
+1
+
+_For My Grandmother_
+
+This lovely flower fell to seed;
+Work gently sun and rain;
+She held it as her dying creed
+That she would grow again.
+
+
+2
+
+_For John Keats, Apostle of Beauty_
+
+Not writ in water nor in mist,
+Sweet lyric throat, thy name.
+Thy singing lips that cold death kissed
+Have seared his own with flame.
+
+
+3
+
+_For Paul Laurence Dunbar_
+
+Born of the sorrowful of heart
+Mirth was a crown upon his head;
+Pride kept his twisted lips apart
+In jest, to hide a heart that bled.
+
+
+4
+
+_For a Lady I Know_
+
+She even thinks that up in heaven
+ Her class lies late and snores,
+While poor black cherubs rise at seven
+ To do celestial chores.
+
+
+INCIDENT
+
+Once riding in old Baltimore,
+ Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
+I saw a Baltimorean
+ Keep looking straight at me.
+
+Now I was eight and very small,
+ And he was no whit bigger,
+And so I smiled, but he poked out
+ His tongue and called me, “Nigger.”
+
+I saw the whole of Baltimore
+ From May until December:
+Of all the things that happened there
+ That’s all that I remember.
+
+
+
+
+DONALD JEFFREY HAYES
+
+
+Donald Jeffrey Hayes was born November 16, 1904, in
+Raleigh, N. C. At the age of five his parents brought him
+to Atlantic City, N. J., where he attended the public
+schools through the freshman year of High School. In
+1913 he moved with his family to Pleasantville, N. J.,
+where in his sophomore year of High School he was
+awarded, after a near student strike, court action and the
+dismissal of a member of the faculty--the highest debating
+honors. Following this unpleasantness, he went to Chicago
+where he studied privately the forms of poetry while completing
+his High School work. He graduated in 1926 from
+Englewood an honor student, and distinguished, as it were,
+as “The poet of Englewood” and “The Bronze God” as his
+fellow students dubbed him.
+
+He is at present planning a volume of his verse and
+studying the voice, planning to make his career in the
+concert field.
+
+
+INSCRIPTION
+
+He wrote upon his heart
+As on the door of some dark ancient house:
+Who once lived here has long been dead
+As dead as moss-grown stone
+Only a ghost inhabits here
+One that would be alone
+Only a ghost inhabits here
+A ghost without desire
+Who sits before a shadowed hearth
+And warms to a spectral fire....
+
+
+AUF WIEDERSEHEN
+
+I shall come this way again
+ On some distant morrow
+When the red and golden leaves
+ Have fallen on my sorrow...!
+
+I shall come this way again
+ When this day is rotten
+In the grave of yesterdays
+ And this hour forgotten...!
+
+I shall come this way again
+ Before the lamp light dies
+To comfort you and dry the tear
+ Of penance from your eyes...!
+
+
+NIGHT
+
+Night like purple flakes of snow
+Falls with ease
+Catching on the roofs of houses
+In the tops of trees
+Down upon the distant grass
+And the distant flower
+It will drift into this room
+In an hour....
+
+
+CONFESSION
+
+She kneeled before me begging
+ That I should with a prayer
+Give her absolution
+ (How golden was her hair!)
+
+She begged an absolution
+ While the moments fled
+She thought my tears were pity
+ (My soul her lips were red!)
+
+She begged of me forgiveness
+ God you understand
+(For pale and soft and slender
+ Was her dainty hand!)
+
+She begged that I should pray You
+ That her Soul might rest
+But I could not pray O Master
+ (Ivory was her breast!)
+
+
+NOCTURNE
+
+Softly blow lightly
+O twilight breeze
+Scarcely bend slightly
+O silver trees:
+Night glides slowly down hill ... down stream
+Bringing a myriad star-twinkling dream....
+Softly blow lightly
+O twilight breeze
+Scarcely bend slightly
+O silver trees:
+Night will spill sleep in your day weary eye
+While a soft yellow moon steals down the sky....
+Softly blow
+Scarcely bend
+So ...!
+Lullaby....
+
+
+AFTER ALL
+
+After all and after all
+When the song is sung
+And swallowed up in silence
+It were more real unsung....
+
+After all and after all
+When the lips have stirred
+Such a little of the thought
+Is transmuted in the word....
+
+Suffer not my ears with hearing
+Suffer not your thoughts with speech.
+Let us feel into our meaning
+And thus know the all of each.
+
+
+
+
+JONATHAN HENDERSON BROOKS
+
+
+I was born on a farm twelve miles southwest of Lexington,
+Mississippi, in 1904. When I was eleven years
+old our family was disunited by divorce. My three sisters
+and only brother went with father while I chose to become
+my mother’s “little ploughman.” We worked around on
+“half shares” in the community of my birth until I was
+fourteen, and then my mother, who had managed somehow
+to save enough money to keep me in school for four
+months, sent me to Jackson College. It was here that I
+received my first material recognition for writing when
+I was awarded the first prize in a local contest for my
+first story, entitled “The Bible In The Cotton Field.”
+Mother’s plan was to send me back to Jackson College
+again the following year, but the white landlord took her
+entire crop of four bales to cover the land rent of my
+uncle with whom we had gone to live in Humphreys
+County that year.
+
+My formal education has been interrupted more than
+once by periods of farming and teaching. I moved up
+my years and taught two five-months sessions in Humphreys
+County before I finished my high school work. In
+the fall of 1923 I matriculated at Lincoln University,
+Missouri, and graduated from its high school department
+in June 1925 with salutatory honors. Lincoln was very
+kind to me during those two years--the happiest I have
+known in all my life. It gave me work enough to cover
+my expenses while attending there, twice chose me the
+president of my class, and bestowed upon me each of the
+three first prizes it offers in the high school department,
+besides electing me class poet and giving me a host of
+staunch friends.
+
+I am now pursuing my college work at Tougaloo College
+and am part time pastor of the second Baptist Church
+of Kosciusko, Mississippi.
+
+
+THE RESURRECTION
+
+His friends went off and left Him dead
+In Joseph’s subterranean bed,
+Embalmed with myrrh and sweet aloes,
+And wrapped in snow-white burial clothes.
+
+Then shrewd men came and set a seal
+Upon His grave, lest thieves should steal
+His lifeless form away, and claim
+For Him an undeserving fame.
+
+“There is no use,” the soldiers said,
+“Of standing sentries by the dead.”
+Wherefore, they drew their cloaks around
+Themselves, and fell upon the ground,
+And slept like dead men, all night through,
+In the pale moonlight and chilling dew.
+
+A muffled whiff of sudden breath
+Ruffled the passive air of death.
+
+He woke, and raised Himself in bed;
+ Recalled how He was crucified;
+Touched both hands’ fingers to His head,
+ And lightly felt His fresh-healed side.
+
+Then with a deep, triumphant sigh,
+He coolly put His grave-clothes by--
+Folded the sweet, white winding sheet,
+ The toweling, the linen bands,
+ The napkin, all with careful hands--
+And left the borrowed chamber neat.
+
+His steps were like the breaking day:
+ So soft across the watch He stole,
+ He did not wake a single soul,
+Nor spill one dewdrop by the way.
+
+Now Calvary was loveliness:
+ Lilies that flowered thereupon
+Pulled off the white moon’s pallid dress,
+ And put the morning’s vesture on.
+
+“Why seek the living among the dead?
+He is not here,” the angel said.
+
+The early winds took up the words,
+And bore them to the lilting birds,
+The leafing trees, and everything
+That breathed the living breath of spring.
+
+
+THE LAST QUARTER MOON OF
+THE DYING YEAR
+
+The last quarter moon of the dying year,
+Pendant behind a naked cottonwood tree
+On a frosty, dawning morning
+With the back of her silver head
+Turned to the waking sun.
+Quiet like the waters
+Of Galilee
+After the Lord had bid them
+“Peace, be still.”
+O silent beauty, indescribable!
+
+Dead, do they say?
+Would God that I shall seem
+So beautiful in death.
+
+
+PAEAN
+
+Across the dewy lawn she treads
+ Before the sun awakes
+While lush, green grasses bow their heads
+ To kiss the tracks she makes.
+
+The violets, in clusters, stand
+ And stare her beauty through,
+And seem so happy in her hand,
+ They know not what to do.
+
+She must have come whence zephyrs blow,
+ From sprites’ or angels’ lands;
+Her heart is meet for God to know--
+ Oh, heaven is where she stands!
+
+
+
+
+GLADYS MAY CASELY HAYFORD
+
+
+“I was born at Axim on the African Gold Coast in 1904
+on the 11th of May to singularly cultured and intellectual
+parents, my mother being one of the daughters of Judge
+Smith, the first Judge of the Excomission Court of Sierra
+Leone, and my father being one of the three pioneer lawyers
+of the Gold Coast.
+
+I am a Fanti, of the Fanti tribe which spreads from
+Axim right down the Gold Coast, to Acera, and is subdivided
+into groups speaking different dialects. It is said
+that the Acera branch, at one time, wandered away from
+the main body and eventually arrived also at the sea coast,
+speaking another tongue, but retaining the same customs.
+
+I spent five years in England, three of which were spent
+in school. I went to Penrohs College, Colwyn Bay in
+Wales, and on my return home became a school teacher
+in The Girls Vocational School, Sierra Leone.
+
+By twenty, I had the firm conviction that I was meant
+to write for Africa. This was accentuated by the help
+which our boys and girls need so much and fired by the
+determination to show those who are prejudiced against
+colour, that we deny inferiority to them, spiritually, intellectually
+and morally; and to prove it.
+
+I argued that the first thing to do, was to imbue our
+own people with the idea of their own beauty, superiority
+and individuality, with a love and admiration for our own
+country, which has been systematically suppressed. Consequently
+I studied the beautiful points of Negro physique,
+texture of skin, beauty of hair, soft sweetness of
+eyes, charm of curves, so that none should think it a
+shame to be black, but rather a glorious adventure.”
+
+
+NATIVITY
+
+Within a native hut, ere stirred the dawn,
+Unto the Pure One was an Infant born
+Wrapped in blue lappah that his mother dyed.
+Laid on his father’s home-tanned deer-skin hide
+The babe still slept by all things glorified.
+Spirits of black bards burst their bonds and sang,
+“Peace upon earth” until the heavens rang.
+All the black babies who from earth had fled,
+Peeped through the clouds, then gathered round His head.
+Telling of things a baby needs to do,
+When first he opens his eyes on wonders new;
+Telling Him that to sleep was sweeter rest,
+All comfort came from His black mother’s breast.
+Their gifts were of Love caught from the springing sod,
+Whilst tears and laughter were the gifts of God.
+Then all the wise men of the past stood forth
+Filling the air East, West, and South and North;
+And told him of the joys that wisdom brings
+To mortals in their earthly wanderings.
+The children of the past shook down each bough,
+Wreathed Frangepani blossoms for His brow;
+They put pink lilies in His mother’s hand,
+And heaped for both the first fruits of the land.
+His father cut some palm fronds that the air
+Be coaxed to zephyrs while He rested there.
+Birds trilled their hallelujahs; and the dew
+Trembled with laughter till the babe laughed too.
+All the black women brought their love so wise,
+And kissed their motherhood into his mother’s eyes.
+
+Note: lappah--a straight woven cloth tied round the waist to form a
+skirt.
+
+Frangepani--An African flower.
+
+
+RAINY SEASON LOVE SONG
+
+Out of the tense awed darkness, my Frangepani comes;
+Whilst the blades of Heaven flash round her, and the roll of thunder drums
+My young heart leaps and dances, with exquisite joy and pain,
+As storms within and storms without I meet my love in the rain.
+
+“The rain is in love with you darling; it’s kissing you everywhere,
+Rain pattering over your small brown feet, rain in your curly hair;
+Rain in the vale that your twin breasts make, as in delicate mounds they
+ rise,
+I hope there is rain in your heart, Frangepani, as rain half fills your
+ eyes.”
+
+Into my hands she cometh, and the lightning of my desire
+Flashes and leaps about her, more subtle than Heaven’s fire;
+“The lightning’s in love with you darling; it is loving you so much,
+That its warm electricity in you pulses wherever I may touch.
+When I kiss your lips and your eyes, and your hands like twin flowers
+ apart,
+I know there is lightning, Frangepani, deep in the depths of your heart.”
+
+The thunder rumbles about us, and I feel its triumphant note
+As your warm arms steal around me; and I kiss your dusky throat;
+“The thunder’s in love with you darling. It hides its power in your breast.
+And I feel it stealing o’er me as I lie in your arms at rest.
+I sometimes wonder, beloved, when I drink from life’s proffered bowl,
+Whether there’s thunder hidden in the innermost parts of your soul.”
+
+Out of my arms she stealeth; and I am left alone with the night,
+Void of all sounds save peace, the first faint glimmer of light.
+Into the quiet, hushed stillness my Frangepani goes.
+Is there peace within like the peace without? Only the darkness knows.
+
+
+THE SERVING GIRL
+
+The calabash wherein she served my food,
+Was smooth and polished as sandalwood:
+Fish, as white as the foam of the sea,
+Peppered, and golden fried for me.
+She brought palm wine that carelessly slips
+From the sleeping palm tree’s honeyed lips.
+But who can guess, or even surmise
+The countless things she served with her eyes?
+
+
+BABY COBINA
+
+BROWN BABY COBINA, with his large black velvet eyes,
+His little coos of ecstacies, his gurgling of surprise,
+With brass bells on his ankles, that laugh where’er he goes,
+It’s so rare for bells to tinkle, above brown dimpled toes.
+
+BROWN BABY COBINA is so precious that we fear
+Something might come and steal him, when we grownups are not near;
+So we tied bells on his ankles, and kissed on them this charm--
+“Bells, guard our Baby Cobina from all devils and all harm.”
+
+
+
+
+LUCY ARIEL WILLIAMS
+
+
+Lucy Ariel Williams was born in Mobile, Alabama,
+March 3, 1905. Her parents, Dr. and Mrs. H. Roger
+Williams surrounded her with the aesthetic and cultural
+environment usually given the only daughters in professional
+homes in the South. Miss Williams is well known
+as a modiste, poet and extremely talented pianist. Her
+early training was acquired at Emerson Institute, Mobile,
+Alabama. Later she was graduated from Talladega College
+and Fisk University, after which she attended Oberlin
+Conservatory of Music, Oberlin, Ohio. Although a
+first year student there, she received third year classification,
+being the first member of her race to be so honored.
+Her work has appeared in _Opportunity_ and other journals.
+Her poem “Northboun’” received first prize in the _Opportunity_
+contest for 1926.
+
+
+NORTHBOUN’
+
+O’ de wurl’ ain’t flat,
+An’ de wurl’ ain’t roun’,
+H’it’s one long strip
+Hangin’ up an’ down--
+Jes’ Souf an’ Norf;
+Jes’ Norf an’ Souf.
+
+Talkin’ ’bout sailin’ ’round de wurl’--
+Huh! I’d be so dizzy my head ’ud twurl.
+If dis heah earf wuz jes’ a ball
+You no the people all ’ud fall.
+
+O’ de wurl’ ain’t flat,
+An’ de wurl’ ain’t roun’,
+H’it’s one long strip
+Hangin’ up an’ down--
+Jes’ Souf an’ Norf;
+Jes’ Norf an’ Souf.
+
+Talkin’ ’bout the City whut Saint John saw--
+Chile you oughta go to Saginaw;
+A nigger’s chance is “finest kind,”
+An’ pretty gals ain’t hard to find.
+
+Huh! de wurl’ ain’t flat,
+An’ de wurl’ ain’t roun’,
+Jes’ one long strip
+Hangin’ up an’ down.
+Since Norf is up,
+An’ Souf is down,
+An’ Hebben is up,
+I’m upward boun’.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE LEONARD ALLEN
+
+
+I was born in Lumberton, North Carolina, September
+10, 1905. My parents, Professor and Mrs. D. P. Allen,
+were then in charge of Whitin Normal School, a thriving
+secondary school which was discontinued at my father’s
+death some ten years ago.
+
+My high school days were spent at Redstone Academy,
+located at Lumberton. I can think of nothing of interest
+to mention concerning this period, except that I was an
+omnivorous reader, and learned to love literature, and
+especially poetry, with a passionate intensity.
+
+Four years of college at Johnson C. Smith University
+followed, during which time I studied a little, read a great
+deal, and dabbled in music and literature. Among other
+things, I experimented with the piano enough to become
+a fairly advanced performer.
+
+It was during my stay at college that my longing to
+become a writer grew particularly ardent. A good many
+of my literary attempts saw the light in school and local
+periodicals, some bringing encouraging comment. In June
+of 1926, I was graduated, having been chosen as valedictorian
+for that year.
+
+I feel it necessary to mention here that my college
+career was made possible mainly through the sacrifices of
+my noble and devoted mother.
+
+In the past winter I was engaged in teaching at Kendall
+Institute in Sumter, S. C. During this time some of my
+work appeared in _Opportunity_, _American Life_, _The Southwestern
+Christian Advocate_, and _The Lyric West_.
+
+This year one of my poems, “To Melody,” was awarded
+the prize for the best sonnet in a state-wide contest conducted
+by the United Daughters of the Confederacy
+(North Carolina Division).
+
+
+TO MELODY
+
+I think that man hath made no beauteous thing
+More lovely than a glorious melody
+That soars aloft in splendor, full and free,
+And graceful as a swallow on the wing!
+A melody that seems to move, and sing,
+And quiver, in its radiant ecstasy,
+That bends and rises like a slender tree
+Which sways before the gentle winds of Spring!
+
+Ah, men will ever love thee, holy art!
+For thou, of all the blessings God hath given,
+Canst best revive and cheer the wounded heart
+And nearest bring the weary soul to Heaven!
+Of all God’s precious gifts, it seems to me,
+The choicest is the gift of melody.
+
+
+PORTRAIT
+
+Her eyes? Dark pools of deepest shade,
+ Like sylvan lakes that lie
+In some sequestered forest glade
+ Beneath a starry sky.
+
+Her cheeks? The ripened chestnut’s hue,--
+ Rich autumn’s sun-kissed brown!
+Caressed by sunbeams dancing through
+ Red leaves that flutter down.
+
+Her form? A slender pine that sways
+ Before the murmuring breeze
+In summer, when the south wind plays
+ Soft music through the trees.
+
+Herself? A laughing, joyous sprite
+ Who smiles from dawn till dark,
+As lovely as a summer night
+ And carefree as a lark.
+
+
+
+
+RICHARD BRUCE
+
+
+I was born in Washington, D. C., on the second of July,
+1906, and have never ceased to marvel at the fact. After
+attending public school with very good marks (I was
+thrashed if I did not lead my class), I attended Dunbar
+High School of the same city. When I was thirteen my
+father died, my greatest impression being the crowded
+church and the vault. Mother left Washington for New
+York where my brother and I joined her in a few months.
+New York was an adventure and still is. A glorious
+something torn from a novel. Even the first hard winter
+with mother ill and my feet on the ground was just a part
+of it. My gathering bits of fur to paste on newspaper to
+cut out for inner soles for my shoes, the walking to work
+to save carfare, and getting lunch as best I could, all
+seemed romantic and highly colored. Weren’t there theatres
+and lights, Broadway, Fifth Avenue ... and lights?
+Noise and bustle and high silk hats and flowers in pots
+in the Bowery. Hobble cars creeping like caterpillars up
+Broadway. Taxis and people and forty-second street.
+Traffic towers and tall buildings. Wasn’t this New York?
+A year later I discovered Harlem. I was at that time
+an art apprentice at seven fifty a week. But that was too
+little money. So I became in turn errand boy for ten
+dollars, bell hop in an all-women’s hotel for eleven fifty-five,
+eighteen with tips, secretary and confidence man for
+a modiste for twenty-five, ornamental iron-worker and
+designer for twenty-eight, and elevator operator for thirty.
+Then I had the mumps and despite the glamor of New
+York, I wanted to go, just go somewhere. So I went to
+Panama working my way. Then New York again and a
+costume design class. A visit home to D. C. where I met
+Langston Hughes. _Opportunity_ accepted my first poem.
+Washington for eleven months then New York again. I
+arrived penniless and have remained so. Dilatory jobs,
+trips to New England, Florida, California and Canada, but
+always New York again. The few drawings and sketches
+made on these trips were either destroyed, lost, or given
+away en route. I began to write seriously and to paint
+just as seriously; I entered contests but never won. I am
+still penniless and happy and planning to go to Paris and
+Vienna by hook or crook.
+
+
+SHADOW
+
+Silhouette
+On the face of the moon
+Am I.
+A dark shadow in the light.
+A silhouette am I
+On the face of the moon
+Lacking color
+Or vivid brightness
+But defined all the clearer
+Because
+I am dark,
+Black on the face of the moon.
+A shadow am I
+Growing in the light,
+Not understood as is the day,
+But more easily seen
+Because
+I am a shadow in the light.
+
+
+CAVALIER
+
+Slay fowl and beast; pluck clean the vine,
+Prepare the feast and pearl the wine.
+Bring on the best! Bring on the bard,
+Bring on the rest. Let nought retard
+Nor yet distress with putrid breath,
+My new mistress, My Lady Death.
+
+
+
+
+WARING CUNEY
+
+
+Waring Cuney was born in Washington, D. C., May 6,
+1906. He received his education in the public schools of
+that city and at Howard University. Later he attended
+Lincoln University, and while there sang in the Glee Club
+and the quartet. His work with these groups encouraged
+him to study music and he is now studying voice at the
+New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. His
+first published poem was “No Images” which won first
+award in the _Opportunity_ contest of 1926. Since then he
+has continued to write and his poems have appeared in
+_Opportunity_, Braithwaite’s _Anthology_, _The Forum_, and
+_Palms_.
+
+
+THE DEATH BED
+
+All the time they were praying
+He watched the shadow of a tree
+Flicker on the wall.
+
+There is no need of prayer,
+He said,
+No need at all.
+
+The kin-folk thought it strange
+That he should ask them from a dying bed.
+But they left all in a row
+And it seemed to ease him
+To see them go.
+
+There were some who kept on praying
+In a room across the hall
+And some who listened to the breeze
+That made the shadows waver
+On the wall.
+
+He tried his nerve
+On a song he knew
+And made an empty note
+That might have come,
+From a bird’s harsh throat.
+
+And all the time it worried him
+That they were in there praying
+And all the time he wondered
+What it was they could be saying.
+
+
+A TRIVIALITY
+
+Not to dance with her
+Was such a trivial thing
+
+There were girls more fair than she,--
+
+To-day
+Ten girls dressed in white.
+Each had a white rose wreath.
+
+They made a dead man’s arch
+And ten strong men
+Carried a body through.
+
+Not to dance with her
+Was a trivial thing.
+
+
+I THINK I SEE HIM THERE
+
+I think I see Him there
+With a stern dream on his face
+
+I see Him there--
+
+Wishing they would hurry
+The last nail in place.
+
+And I wonder, had I been there,
+Would I have doubted too
+
+Or would the dream have told me,
+What this man speaks is true.
+
+
+DUST
+
+Dust,
+
+Through which
+Proud blood
+Once flowed.
+
+Dust,
+
+Where a civilization
+Flourished.
+
+Dust,
+The Valley of the Nile,
+Dust,
+
+You proud ones, proud of the skill
+With which you play this game--Civilization;
+Do not forget that it is a very old game.
+Men used to play it on the banks
+Of the Tigris and the Euphrates
+When the world was a wilderness.
+
+There is a circle around China
+Where once a wall stood.
+Carthage is a heap of ashes.
+And Rome knew the pomp and glory
+You know now.
+
+The Coliseum tells a story
+The Woolworth Building may repeat.
+
+Dust,
+Pharaohs and their armies sleep there.
+
+Dust,
+Shall it stir again?
+
+Will Pharaohs rise and rule
+And their armies march once more?
+
+_Civilization continually shifts
+Upon the places of the earth._
+
+
+NO IMAGES
+
+She does not know
+Her beauty,
+She thinks her brown body
+Has no glory.
+
+If she could dance
+Naked,
+Under palm trees
+And see her image in the river
+She would know.
+
+But there are no palm trees
+On the street,
+And dish water gives back no images.
+
+
+THE RADICAL
+
+Men never know
+What they are doing.
+They always make a muddle
+Of their affairs,
+They always tie their affairs
+Into a knot
+They cannot untie.
+Then I come in
+Uninvited.
+They do not ask me in;
+I am the radical,
+The bomb thrower,
+I untie the knot
+That they have made,
+And they never thank me.
+
+
+TRUE LOVE
+
+Her love is true I know,
+Much more true
+Than angel’s love;
+For angels love in heaven
+Where a thousand harps
+Are playing.
+
+She loves in a tenement
+Where the only music
+She hears
+Is the cry of street car brakes
+And the toot of automobile horns
+And the drip of a kitchen spigot
+All day.
+Her love is true I know.
+
+
+
+
+EDWARD S. SILVERA
+
+
+I was born in Florida in the year 1906--moved to
+Orange, N. J., at an early age--graduated from Orange
+High School in 1924--am now a Junior at Lincoln University,
+Pennsylvania. Here I am a member of the varsity
+basket-ball and tennis teams and a member of Kappa
+Alpha Psi Fraternity.
+
+I get a great deal of pleasure out of observing life and
+then writing about it just as I see it.
+
+
+SOUTH STREET
+
+(Philadelphia, Pa.)
+
+South Street is not beautiful,
+But the songs of people there
+Hold the beauty of the jungle,
+And the fervidness of prayer.
+
+South Street has no mansions,
+But the hands of South Street men
+Built pyramids along the Nile
+That Time has failed to rend.
+
+South Street is America,
+Breast of the foster mother
+Where a thousand ill-kept children
+Vie for suck, with one another.
+
+
+JUNGLE TASTE
+
+There is a coarseness
+In the songs of black men
+Coarse as the songs
+Of the sea,
+There is a weird strangeness
+In the songs of black men
+Which sounds not strange
+To me.
+
+There is beauty
+In the faces of black women,
+Jungle beauty
+And mystery
+Dark hidden beauty
+In the faces of black women,
+Which only black men
+See.
+
+
+
+
+HELENE JOHNSON
+
+
+Helene Johnson was born twenty years ago in Boston,
+Mass., where she received her early education and attended
+Boston University for a short time. A year ago she came
+to New York to attend the Extension Division of Columbia
+University. Her work has appeared in _Opportunity_,
+_Vanity Fair_ and several New York dailies; and has been
+reprinted in _Palms_, _The Literary Digest_, and Braithwaite’s
+_Anthology_.
+
+
+WHAT DO I CARE FOR MORNING
+
+What do I care for morning,
+For a shivering aspen tree,
+For sun flowers and sumac
+Opening greedily?
+What do I care for morning,
+For the glare of the rising sun,
+For a sparrow’s noisy prating,
+For another day begun?
+Give me the beauty of evening,
+The cool consummation of night,
+And the moon like a love-sick lady,
+Listless and wan and white.
+Give me a little valley
+Huddled beside a hill,
+Like a monk in a monastery,
+Safe and contented and still,
+Give me the white road glistening,
+A strand of the pale moon’s hair,
+And the tall hemlocks towering
+Dark as the moon is fair.
+Oh what do I care for morning,
+Naked and newly born--
+Night is here, yielding and tender--
+What do I care for dawn!
+
+
+SONNET TO A NEGRO IN HARLEM
+
+You are disdainful and magnificent--
+Your perfect body and your pompous gait,
+Your dark eyes flashing solemnly with hate,
+Small wonder that you are incompetent
+To imitate those whom you so despise--
+Your shoulders towering high above the throng,
+Your head thrown back in rich, barbaric song,
+Palm trees and mangoes stretched before your eyes.
+Let others toil and sweat for labor’s sake
+And wring from grasping hands their meed of gold.
+Why urge ahead your supercilious feet?
+Scorn will efface each footprint that you make.
+I love your laughter arrogant and bold.
+You are too splendid for this city street!
+
+
+SUMMER MATURES
+
+Summer matures. Brilliant Scorpion
+Appears. The Pelican’s thick pouch
+Hangs heavily with perch and slugs.
+The brilliant-bellied newt flashes
+Its crimson crest in the white water.
+In the lush meadow, by the river,
+The yellow-freckled toad laughs
+With a toothless gurgle at the white-necked stork
+Standing asleep on one red reedy leg.
+And here Pan dreams of slim stalks clean for piping,
+And of a nightingale gone mad with freedom.
+Come. I shall weave a bed of reeds
+And willow limbs and pale nightflowers.
+I shall strip the roses of their petals,
+And the white down from the swan’s neck.
+Come. Night is here. The air is drunk
+With wild grape and sweet clover.
+And by the sacred fount of Aganippe
+Euterpe sings of love. Ah, the woodland creatures,
+The doves in pairs, the wild sow and her shoats,
+The stag searching the forest for a mate,
+Know more of love than you, my callous Phaon.
+The young moon is a curved white scimitar
+Pierced thru the swooning night.
+Sweet Phaon. With Sappho sleep like the stars at dawn.
+This night was born for love, my Phaon.
+Come.
+
+
+POEM
+
+Little brown boy,
+Slim, dark, big-eyed,
+Crooning love songs to your banjo
+Down at the Lafayette--
+Gee, boy, I love the way you hold your head,
+High sort of and a bit to one side,
+Like a prince, a jazz prince. And I love
+Your eyes flashing, and your hands,
+And your patent-leathered feet,
+And your shoulders jerking the jig-wa.
+And I love your teeth flashing,
+And the way your hair shines in the spotlight
+Like it was the real stuff.
+Gee, brown boy, I loves you all over.
+I’m glad I’m a jig. I’m glad I can
+Understand your dancin’ and your
+Singin’, and feel all the happiness
+And joy and don’t care in you.
+Gee, boy, when you sing, I can close my ears
+And hear tom toms just as plain.
+Listen to me, will you, what do I know
+About tom toms? But I like the word, sort of,
+Don’t you? It belongs to us.
+Gee, boy, I love the way you hold your head,
+And the way you sing, and dance,
+And everything.
+Say, I think you’re wonderful. You’re
+Allright with me,
+You are.
+
+
+FULFILLMENT
+
+To climb a hill that hungers for the sky,
+ To dig my hands wrist deep in pregnant earth,
+To watch a young bird, veering, learn to fly,
+ To give a still, stark poem shining birth.
+
+To hear the rain drool, dimpling, down the drain
+ And splash with a wet giggle in the street,
+To ramble in the twilight after supper,
+ And to count the pretty faces that you meet.
+
+To ride to town on trolleys, crowded, teeming
+ With joy and hurry and laughter and push and sweat--
+Squeezed next a patent-leathered Negro dreaming
+ Of a wrinkled river and a minnow net.
+
+To buy a paper from a breathless boy,
+ And read of kings and queens in foreign lands,
+Hyperbole of romance and adventure,
+ All for a penny the color of my hand.
+
+To lean against a strong tree’s bosom, sentient
+ And hushed before the silent prayer it breathes,
+To melt the still snow with my seething body
+ And kiss the warm earth tremulous underneath.
+
+Ah, life, to let your stabbing beauty pierce me
+ And wound me like we did the studded Christ,
+To grapple with you, loving you too fiercely,
+ And to die bleeding--consummate with Life.
+
+
+THE ROAD
+
+Ah, little road all whirry in the breeze,
+A leaping clay hill lost among the trees,
+The bleeding note of rapture streaming thrush
+Caught in a drowsy hush
+And stretched out in a single singing line of dusky song.
+Ah little road, brown as my race is brown,
+Your trodden beauty like our trodden pride,
+Dust of the dust, they must not bruise you down.
+Rise to one brimming golden, spilling cry!
+
+
+BOTTLED
+
+Upstairs on the third floor
+Of the 135th Street library
+In Harlem, I saw a little
+Bottle of sand, brown sand
+Just like the kids make pies
+Out of down at the beach.
+But the label said: “This
+Sand was taken from the Sahara desert.”
+Imagine that! The Sahara desert!
+Some bozo’s been all the way to Africa to get some sand.
+
+And yesterday on Seventh Avenue
+I saw a darky dressed fit to kill
+In yellow gloves and swallow tail coat
+And swirling a cane. And everyone
+Was laughing at him. Me too,
+At first, till I saw his face
+When he stopped to hear a
+Organ grinder grind out some jazz.
+Boy! You should a seen that darky’s face!
+It just shone. Gee, he was happy!
+And he began to dance. No
+Charleston or Black Bottom for him.
+No sir. He danced just as dignified
+And slow. No, not slow either.
+Dignified and _proud_! You couldn’t
+Call it slow, not with all the
+Cuttin’ up he did. You would a died to see him.
+
+The crowd kept yellin’ but he didn’t hear,
+Just kept on dancin’ and twirlin’ that cane
+And yellin’ out loud every once in a while.
+I know the crowd thought he was coo-coo.
+But say, I was where I could see his face,
+And somehow, I could see him dancin’ in a jungle,
+A real honest-to-cripe jungle, and he wouldn’t have on them
+Trick clothes--those yaller shoes and yaller gloves
+And swallow-tail coat. He wouldn’t have on nothing.
+And he wouldn’t be carrying no cane.
+He’d be carrying a spear with a sharp fine point
+Like the bayonets we had “over there.”
+And the end of it would be dipped in some kind of
+Hoo-doo poison. And he’d be dancin’ black and naked and gleaming.
+And he’d have rings in his ears and on his nose
+And bracelets and necklaces of elephants’ teeth.
+Gee, I bet he’d be beautiful then all right.
+No one would laugh at him then, I bet.
+Say! That man that took that sand from the Sahara desert
+And put it in a little bottle on a shelf in the library,
+That’s what they done to this shine, ain’t it? Bottled him.
+Trick shoes, trick coat, trick cane, trick everything--all glass--
+But inside--
+Gee, that poor shine!
+
+
+MAGALU
+
+Summer comes.
+The ziczac hovers
+’Round the greedy-mouthed crocodile.
+A vulture bears away a foolish jackal.
+The flamingo is a dash of pink
+Against dark green mangroves,
+Her slender legs rivalling her slim neck.
+The laughing lake gurgles delicious music in its throat
+And lulls to sleep the lazy lizard,
+A nebulous being on a sun-scorched rock.
+In such a place,
+In this pulsing, riotous gasp of color,
+I met Magalu, dark as a tree at night,
+Eager-lipped, listening to a man with a white collar
+And a small black book with a cross on it.
+Oh Magalu, come! Take my hand and I will read you poetry,
+Chromatic words,
+Seraphic symphonies,
+Fill up your throat with laughter and your heart with song.
+Do not let him lure you from your laughing waters,
+Lulling lakes, lissome winds.
+Would you sell the colors of your sunset and the fragrance
+Of your flowers, and the passionate wonder of your forest
+For a creed that will not let you dance?
+
+
+
+
+WESLEY CURTWRIGHT
+
+
+Wesley Curtwright was born in Brunswick, Georgia, on
+November 30, 1910, but he knows as little about Georgia,
+perhaps, as about any state in the South. Immediately
+after his father’s death in 1913, he began a disjointed
+tour of the land. He has “broken out in spots” of a dozen
+states both South and North, attending at intervals various
+schools. He lives in New York at present and has
+lived there three years. He is attending Harlem Academy,
+a small private school. He has contributed to _Opportunity_
+and _The Messenger_.
+
+
+THE CLOSE OF DAY
+
+“To meet and then to part,” and that is all,
+To slowly turn an album’s crusty leaves,
+To see the faces and the scenes recall,
+Are things that in a lifetime one achieves.
+
+To wander down a broad-arch gallery,
+Viewing the scenes from life on either side,
+Pressed forward with the force of years to see
+But part of every picture when espied.
+
+The big sun in its blue dome keeps its course,
+Without a falter moves upon its way.
+So human life, returning to its source,
+Is overtaken by the close of day.
+To dream, and being rudely waked from thought,
+Return to peaceful dreaming dearly bought.
+
+
+
+
+LULA LOWE WEEDEN
+
+
+Lula Lowe Weeden was born in Lynchburg, Va., Feb.
+4, 1918. Her mother, Mrs. Lula L. Weeden, herself a
+poet of ability, writes of this youngest of Negro singers:
+“She is a very close observer. Each flower in my garden
+she knows. Sometimes she counts each bloom, lingering
+over those she likes most.
+
+“Each one of my children is very distinct in her make
+up. Lula is quiet, sweet and unselfish, a decided contrast
+to the second. This gives each a chance for moral development
+while trying to adjust her little mind to the other. A
+few nights ago, Iola the second child slapped Mary the
+baby. Lula said to Iola, ‘You are not being a good citizen
+when you strike back even if Mary did slap you.’ Another
+time, Iola was saying what her teacher had said
+about her. Lula remarked, ‘It is not what she says you
+do, it is what you do do.’ Neither statement meant much
+to Iola.
+
+“I have always mixed my night time stories with ‘Home
+spun ones.’ All seem to like them best. I asked Lula
+since Christmas why she liked my stories. She said because
+they seemed to be true, and criticized fairy stories.
+
+“I have emphasized racial stories for this reason--I
+was born on a big farm. There were many employed by
+my father, also tenants. With these we were not allowed
+to mingle. On the edge of the farm there was a white
+school. There was a barrier also. Those little girls with
+golden locks looked like little angels to me. How I
+wished to be like them with their shrill voices and laughter.
+They seemed so happy. I just thought of them as things
+apart. It took much to get this false conception out of
+me. They were just God sent. This I have tried not to
+have my children to fight. Now neither one wishes to be
+white or dislikes them. To them, they all seem like
+people.
+
+“Lula does most of her writing at night. It is a privilege
+to remain a few minutes after the other children to
+finish something. Some nights she will write several. She
+mumbles them to herself before she begins to write and
+then keeps saying the words softly. She will finish this
+and will draw figures and flowers or people. This she
+does very well for a child until she says, ‘I am going to
+write something else.’ Interruptions don’t seem to bother
+her very much as the little ones are always saying something
+to make her laugh. I usually attempt to quiet them,
+but some of her best things are written with many around.
+
+“When she shows them to me, she watches for a favorable
+expression. I always try to be pleased, but somehow
+she knows from my face that that was not so good,
+then remarks, ‘I am going to write something else.’
+
+“The amusing part about it all is that she feels as she
+has begun to write at a mature age, but consoles herself
+with this statement, ‘Stevenson did not begin to write until
+he was fifteen and wrote very skillful things.’
+
+“Lula is just a little girl and is very talkative if anyone
+appeals to her and will talk with her. You can’t
+explain anything too minutely for her--whether it is her
+Sunday school lesson or a star, it matters little.”
+
+
+ME ALONE
+
+As I was going to town,
+I saw a King and a Queen.
+Such ringing of bells you never heard,
+The clerks ran out of the stores;
+You know how it was, Me alone.
+I was standing as the others were,
+“Oh! you little girl,” some one said,
+“The King wants you,”
+I became frightened
+Wondering what he had to say,
+Me alone.
+Here’s what he wanted:
+He wanted me to ride in his coach,
+I felt myself so much riding in a King’s coach,
+Me alone.
+
+
+HAVE YOU SEEN IT
+
+Have you ever seen the moon
+And stars stick together?
+Have you ever seen it?
+Have you ever seen bad?
+Have you ever seen good
+And bad stick together?
+Have you ever seen it?
+
+
+ROBIN RED BREAST
+
+Little Robin red breast,
+I hear you sing your song.
+I would love to have you put it into my little cage,
+Into my little mouth.
+
+
+THE STREAM
+
+It was running down to the great Atlantic.
+I called it back to me,
+But it slyly looked and said,
+“I have not time to waste,”
+And just went arunning running on.
+
+
+THE LITTLE DANDELION
+
+The dandelion stares
+In the yellow sunlight.
+How very still it is!
+When it is old and grey,
+I blow its white hair away,
+And leave it with a bald head.
+
+
+DANCE
+
+Down at the hall at midnight sometimes,
+You hear them singing rhymes.
+These girls are dancing with boys.
+They are too big for toys.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+_Absence_, 91
+
+Across the dewy lawn she treads, 195
+
+A crust of bread and a corner to sleep in, 5
+
+_Advice_, 156
+
+A fancy halts my feet at the way-side well, 15
+
+_Africa_, 123
+
+_After All_, 191
+
+_After the Quarrel_, 5
+
+Ah, how poets sing and die, 50
+
+Ah, I know what happiness is, 107
+
+Ah, little road all whirry in the breeze, 221
+
+Ah, you are cruel, 47
+
+ALEXANDER, LEWIS, 122
+
+ALLEN, GEORGE LEONARD, 203
+
+All that night I walked alone and wept, 169
+
+All the time they were praying, 208
+
+Although she feeds me bread of bitterness, 83
+
+Always at dusk, the same tearless experience, 37
+
+_America_, 83
+
+And God stepped out on space, 19
+
+_And What Shall You Say?_, 103
+
+_April Day, An_, 102
+
+A silence slipping around like death, 46
+
+As I was going to town, 227
+
+A tree is more than a shadow, 170
+
+_At the Carnival_, 53
+
+_Auf Wiedersehen_, 189
+
+
+_Baby Cobina_, 200
+
+_Baker’s Boy, The_, 58
+
+_Band of Gideon, The_, 103
+
+Beat the drums of tragedy for me, 148
+
+BENNETT, GWENDOLYN B., 153
+
+_Black Madonna, The_, 177
+
+_Black Man Talks of Reaping, A_, 165
+
+Black reapers with the sound of steel on stone, 94
+
+_Blight_, 170
+
+Boll-weevil’s coming, and the winter’s cold, 99
+
+BONTEMPS, ARNA, 162
+
+_Bottled_, 221
+
+Bow down my soul in worship very low, 87
+
+BRAITHWAITE, WILLIAM STANLEY, 31
+
+BROOKS, JONATHAN HENDERSON, 192
+
+Brother, come, 103
+
+Brother to the firefly, 55
+
+BROWN, STERLING A., 129
+
+Brown Baby Cobina, 200
+
+BRUCE, RICHARD, 205
+
+Brushes and paints are all I have, 155
+
+
+_Cavalier_, 207
+
+Cemeteries are places for departed souls, 159
+
+_Challenge_, 138
+
+Chilled into a serenity, 110
+
+_Close of Day, The_, 225
+
+_Close Your Eyes_, 171
+
+Come, brother, come. Let’s lift it, 97
+
+_Confession_, 190
+
+Consider me a memory, a dream that passed away, 79
+
+COTTER, JOSEPH S., SR., 10
+
+COTTER, JOSEPH S., JR., 99
+
+_Cotton Song_, 97
+
+Could I but retrace, 125
+
+_Creation, The_, 19
+
+_Creed_, 51
+
+CULLEN, COUNTEE, 179
+
+CUNEY, WARING, 207
+
+CURTWRIGHT, WESLEY, 224
+
+
+_Dance_, 229
+
+_Dark Brother, The_, 124
+
+_Day and Night_, 129
+
+_Day-breakers, The_, 171
+
+Dear, when we sit in that high, placid room, 66
+
+_Death Bed, The_, 208
+
+_Death Song_, 4
+
+_Debt, The_, 9
+
+DELANY, CLARISSA SCOTT, 140
+
+_Del Cascar_, 33
+
+De railroad bridge’s a sad song, 147
+
+_Deserter, The_, 102
+
+_Desolate_, 88
+
+DICKINSON, BLANCHE TAYLOR, 105
+
+Down at the hall at midnight sometimes, 229
+
+_Dream Variation_, 149
+
+_Dreams of the Dreamer, The_, 80
+
+DU BOIS, WILLIAM EDWARD BURGHARDT, 25
+
+DUNBAR, PAUL LAURENCE, 1
+
+_Dunbar_, 50
+
+_Dusk_, 46
+
+_Dust_, 210
+
+Dust, through which proud blood once flowed, 210
+
+
+_Ere Sleep Comes Down to Soothe the Weary Eyes_, 2
+
+_Evening Song_, 94
+
+_Exhortation: Summer, 1919_, 84
+
+_Eyes of My Regret, The_, 37
+
+
+_Face_, 98
+
+_Fantasy_, 158
+
+_Fantasy in Purple_, 148
+
+Father John’s bread was made of rye, 31
+
+FAUSET, JESSIE, 64
+
+Flame-flower, Day-torch, Mauna Loa, 52
+
+_Flame-Heart_, 85
+
+_For the Candle Light_, 45
+
+For this peculiar tint that paints my house, 92
+
+_Four Epitaphs_, 186
+
+Four great walls have hemmed me in, 110
+
+_Four Walls_, 110
+
+_Fragment_, 70
+
+Frail children of sorrow, dethroned by a hue, 75
+
+_From the Dark Tower_, 183
+
+_From the German of Uhland_, 17
+
+_Fulfillment_, 219
+
+Full moon rising on the waters of my heart, 94
+
+
+Gay little Girl-of-the-Diving-Tank, 53
+
+_Georgia Dusk_, 95
+
+_Gethsemane_, 169
+
+Give over to high things the fervent thought, 182
+
+_Glory of the Day Was in Her Face, The_, 18
+
+_God Give to Men_, 172
+
+God give the yellow man, 172
+
+_Golgotha Is a Mountain_, 173
+
+Go through the gates with closed eyes, 171
+
+_Grass Fingers_, 38
+
+_Greenness_, 36
+
+GRIMKÉ, ANGELINA WELD, 35
+
+
+Hair--silver-gray, like streams of stars, 98
+
+_Hatred_, 160
+
+Have you ever seen the moon, 228
+
+_Have You Seen It_, 228
+
+HAYES, DONALD JEFFREY, 188
+
+HAYFORD, GLADYS MAY CASELY, 196
+
+_Heart of a Woman, The_, 81
+
+He came in silvern armour, trimmed with black, 160
+
+Her eyes? Dark pools of deepest shade, 204
+
+Her love is true I know, 213
+
+He scans the world with calm and fearless eyes, 34
+
+He wrote upon his heart, 188
+
+His friends went off and left Him dead, 193
+
+_Homesick Blues_, 147
+
+_Homing_, 172
+
+_Hope_, 75
+
+HORNE, FRANK, 111
+
+_House in Taos, A_, 152
+
+How did it happen that we quarreled? 65
+
+HUGHES, LANGSTON, 144
+
+_Hushed by the Hands of Sleep_, 36
+
+
+I am so tired and weary, 101
+
+I ask you this, 146
+
+I buried you deeper last night, 113
+
+I cannot hold my peace, John Keats, 184
+
+I do not ask for love, ah! no, 77
+
+I doubt not God is good, 182
+
+I had no thought of violets of late, 72
+
+_I Have a Friend_, 47
+
+_I Have a Rendezvous with Life_, 180
+
+I have gone back in boyish wonderment, 139
+
+I have seen a lovely thing, 170
+
+I have sown beside all waters in my day, 165
+
+I have the greatest fun at night, 58
+
+I kissed a kiss in youth, 31
+
+I know not why or whence he came, 102
+
+I know what the caged bird feels, alas! 8
+
+I laks yo’ kin’ of lovin’, 134
+
+I long not now, 181
+
+I love you for your brownness, 157
+
+I love your hands, 44
+
+I return the bitterness, 124
+
+I said, in drunken pride of youth and you, 138
+
+I sailed in my dreams to the Land of Night, 158
+
+I see in your eyes, 178
+
+I shall come this way again, 189
+
+I shall hate you, 160
+
+I shall make a song like your hair, 155
+
+I should like to creep, 42
+
+_I Sit and Sew_, 73
+
+I that had found the way so smooth, 70
+
+_I Think I See Him There_, 210
+
+I think that man hath, 204
+
+I thought I saw an angel flying low, 166
+
+_I Too_, 145
+
+_I Want to Die While You Love Me_, 78
+
+_I Weep_, 45
+
+I went to court last night, 63
+
+If I have run my course and seek the pearls, 64
+
+If my garden oak spares one bare ledge, 51
+
+I’m folding up my little dreams, 79
+
+_Incident_, 187
+
+_Innocence_, 51
+
+_Inscription_, 188
+
+_Interim_, 142
+
+In wintertime I have such fun, 59
+
+Is Life itself but many ways of thought, 48
+
+It crawled away ’neath my feet, 109
+
+It is fitting that you be here, 112
+
+It was running down to the great Atlantic, 228
+
+I’ve known rivers, 149
+
+
+_Japanese Hokku_, 127
+
+Jericho is on the inside, 106
+
+JOHNSON, FENTON, 61
+
+JOHNSON, GEORGIA DOUGLAS, 74
+
+JOHNSON, HELENE, 215
+
+JOHNSON, JAMES WELDON, 15
+
+_Joy_, 140
+
+Joy shakes me like the wind that lifts a sail, 140
+
+_Jungle Taste_, 214
+
+
+Lady, my lady, come from out the garden, 136
+
+_Lancelot_, 169
+
+_Last Quarter Moon of the Dying Year, The_, 195
+
+_La Vie C’est La Vie_, 69
+
+Lay me down beneaf de willers in de grass, 4
+
+Lemme be wid Casey Jones, 130
+
+_Length of Moon_, 168
+
+_Lethe_, 77
+
+Let me learn now where Beauty is, 48
+
+_Letters Found Near a Suicide_, 114
+
+_Life_, 5
+
+_Life-Long, Poor Browning_, 49
+
+_Lines to a Nasturtium_, 52
+
+_Lines Written at the Grave of Alexander Dumas_, 159
+
+_Litany of Atlanta, A_, 26
+
+Little black boy, 120
+
+Little brown boy, 218
+
+_Little Dandelion, The_, 229
+
+Little Robin red breast, 228
+
+_Little Son_, 76
+
+“Lo, I am black but I am comely too,” 124
+
+Lolotte, who attires my hair, 67
+
+_Long Gone_, 134
+
+Long have I beat with timid hands, 76
+
+
+_Magalu_, 223
+
+_Marathon Runner, The_, 64
+
+_Mask, The_, 143
+
+MATHEUS, JOHN FREDERICK, 60
+
+_Maumee Ruth_, 133
+
+MCCALL, JAMES EDWARD, 33
+
+MCKAY, CLAUDE, 81
+
+_Me Alone_, 227
+
+Men never know, 212
+
+Might as well bury her, 133
+
+_Mona Lisa, A_, 42
+
+_Morning Light_, 55
+
+_Mother to Son_, 151
+
+_My City_, 25
+
+My heart that was so passionless, 70
+
+_My House_, 92
+
+_My Little Dreams_, 79
+
+My little stone, 114
+
+My spirit is a pestilential city, 88
+
+My window opens out into the trees, 141
+
+
+_Nativity_, 197
+
+_Negro Speaks of Rivers, The_, 149
+
+_Negro Woman_, 122
+
+_Neighbors_, 47
+
+NELSON, ALICE DUNBAR, 71
+
+_New Negro, The_, 34
+
+NEWSOME, MARY EFFIE LEE, 55
+
+_Nigger_, 120
+
+_Night_, 189
+
+Night like purple flakes of snow, 189
+
+_Noblesse Oblige_, 67
+
+_Nocturne_, 190
+
+_Nocturne at Bethesda_, 166
+
+_No Images_, 212
+
+_Northboun’_, 201
+
+Not as the white nations, 177
+
+Not to dance with her, 209
+
+_November Cotton Flower_, 99
+
+
+O apple blossoms, 127
+
+O brothers mine, take care! Take care!, 22
+
+_October XXIX, 1795_, 32
+
+O’ de wurl’ ain’t flat, 201
+
+_Odyssey of Big Boy_, 130
+
+Oh, the blue, blue bloom, 56
+
+_Old Black Men_, 77
+
+Once more, listening to the wind and rain, 163
+
+Once riding in old Baltimore, 187
+
+_On Seeing Two Brown Boys in a Catholic Church_, 112
+
+On such a day as this I think, 102
+
+On summer afternoons I sit, 69
+
+On the dusty earth-drum, 100
+
+O Silent God, Thou whose voice afar, 26
+
+Out in the sky the great clouds are massing, 7
+
+Out of the tense awed darkness, 198
+
+O you would clothe me in silken frocks, 87
+
+
+_Paean_, 195
+
+_Pansy_, 56
+
+_Paradox_, 48
+
+_Poem_, 107
+
+_Poem_, 150
+
+_Poem_, 218
+
+_Portrait_, 204
+
+Pour O pour that parting soul in song, 96
+
+_Prayer_, 146
+
+_Protest_, 181
+
+_Proving_, 77
+
+_Puck Goes to Court_, 63
+
+_Puppet Player, The_, 46
+
+
+_Quatrains_, 155
+
+_Questing_, 48
+
+_Quilt, The_, 58
+
+_Quoits_, 59
+
+
+_Radical, The_, 212
+
+_Rain Music_, 100
+
+_Rainy Season Love Song_, 198
+
+_Reapers_, 94
+
+_Recessional_, 79
+
+_Rencontre_, 70
+
+_Requiem_, 61
+
+_Resurrection, The_, 193
+
+_Return_, 139
+
+_Return, The_, 70
+
+_Return, The_, 163
+
+_Revelation_, 107
+
+RICE, ALBERT, 176
+
+_Road, The_, 221
+
+_Robin Red Breast_, 228
+
+_Russian Cathedral_, 87
+
+_Rye Bread_, 31
+
+
+_Salutamus_, 138
+
+_Sassafras Tea_, 56
+
+_Scintilla_, 31
+
+_Secret_, 155
+
+_Service_, 75
+
+_Serving Girl, The_, 200
+
+_Shadow_, 206
+
+She does not know, 212
+
+She kneeled before me begging, 190
+
+She tripped and fell against a star, 51
+
+She walked along the crowded street, 107
+
+She wears, my beloved, a rose upon her head, 61
+
+_Ships That Pass in the Night_, 7
+
+Silhouette on the face of the moon, 206
+
+SILVERA, EDWARD S., 213
+
+_Sky Pictures_, 57
+
+Slay fowl and beast; pluck clean the vine, 207
+
+_Snow in October_, 71
+
+So detached and cool she is, 143
+
+Softly blow lightly, 190
+
+_Solace_, 141
+
+Some things are very dear to me, 161
+
+Sometimes a right white mountain, 57
+
+Sometimes it seems as though some puppet player, 46
+
+So much have I forgotten in ten years, 85
+
+_Song for a Dark Girl_, 147
+
+_Song of the Son_, 96
+
+_Sonnet_, 72
+
+_Sonnet_, 160
+
+_Sonnet_, 161
+
+_Sonnet to a Negro in Harlem_, 217
+
+_South Street_, 214
+
+So we, who’ve supped the self-same cup, 5
+
+SPENCER, ANNE, 47
+
+_Stream, The_, 228
+
+_Substitution_, 48
+
+_Suicide’s Note_, 151
+
+Summer comes, 223
+
+_Summer Matures_, 217
+
+_Suppliant, The_, 76
+
+_Supplication_, 101
+
+_Surrender_, 38
+
+Sweet timber land, 172
+
+_Sympathy_, 8
+
+
+_Tanka_, 125
+
+Tell me is there anything lovelier, 36
+
+_Tenebris_, 40
+
+_That Hill_, 109
+
+The baker’s boy delivers loaves, 58
+
+The band of Gideon roam the sky, 103
+
+The bitterness of days like these we know, 138
+
+The breath of life imbued those few dim days, 70
+
+The calabash wherein she served my food, 200
+
+The calm, 151
+
+The dandelion stares, 229
+
+The day is a Negro, 129
+
+The fruit of the orchard is over-ripe, Elaine, 169
+
+The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn, 81
+
+The hills are wroth; the stones have scored, 165
+
+The night is beautiful, 150
+
+The night was made for rest and sleep, 142
+
+Then the golden hour, 168
+
+There is a coarseness, 214
+
+There is a tree, by day, 40
+
+There was a man, 11
+
+The sass’fras tea is red and clear, 56
+
+The sky hangs heavy tonight, 122
+
+The sky, lazily disdaining to pursue, 95
+
+The sky was blue, so blue that day, 45
+
+The very acme of my woe, 76
+
+They have dreamed as young men dream, 77
+
+This is the debt I pay, 9
+
+This lovely flower fell to seed, 186
+
+Thou art not dead, although the spoiler’s hand, 123
+
+Three students once tarried over the Rhine, 17
+
+Through the pregnant universe, 84
+
+Thunder of the Rain God, 152
+
+Time sitting on the throne of Memory, 32
+
+’Tis queer, it is, the ways to men, 39
+
+_To a Certain Lady, in Her Garden_, 136
+
+_To a Certain Woman_, 178
+
+_To a Dark Girl_, 157
+
+_To an Icicle_, 110
+
+_To a Persistent Phantom_, 113
+
+_To a Young Girl Leaving the Hill Country_, 165
+
+To climb a hill that hungers for the sky, 219
+
+Today I saw a thing of arresting poignant beauty, 71
+
+To fling my arms wide, 149
+
+_To John Keats, Poet, at Springtime_, 184
+
+_To Lovers of Earth: Fair Warning_, 182
+
+“To meet and then to part,” 225
+
+_To Melody_, 204
+
+TOOMER, JEAN, 93
+
+_Touché_, 66
+
+Touch me, touch me, 38
+
+_Tragedy of Pete, The_, 11
+
+_Transformation_, 124
+
+_Tree Design, A_, 170
+
+_Triviality, A_, 209
+
+_True Love_, 213
+
+Twin stars through my purpling pane, 46
+
+
+Upstairs on the third floor, 221
+
+
+_Walls of Jericho, The_, 106
+
+Way down South in Dixie, 147
+
+_Way-side Well, The_, 15
+
+_Ways o’ Men, The_, 39
+
+We are not come to wage a strife, 171
+
+We ask for peace. We, at the bound, 38
+
+WEEDEN, LULA LOWE, 225
+
+Well, son, I’ll tell you, 151
+
+Were you a leper bathed in wounds, 77
+
+We shall not always plant while others reap, 183
+
+_We Wear the Mask_, 8
+
+_What Do I Care for Morning_, 216
+
+_What Need Have I for Memory?_, 80
+
+What! Roses growing in the meadow, 59
+
+When face to face we stand, 43
+
+When first you sang a song to me, 157
+
+_When I am Dead_, 80
+
+When I come down to sleep death’s endless night, 25
+
+_When I Die_, 62
+
+_When the Green Lies Over the Earth_, 41
+
+When we count out our gold at the end of the day, 75
+
+_White Witch, The_, 22
+
+_Wild Goat, The_, 87
+
+_Wild Roses_, 59
+
+WILLIAMS, LUCY ARIEL, 201
+
+_Winter Twilight, A_, 46
+
+Within a native hut, 197
+
+_Words! Words!_, 65
+
+
+_Yet Do I Marvel_, 182
+
+You are disdainful and magnificent, 217
+
+_Your Hands_, 44
+
+_Your Songs_, 157
+
+Your words dropped into my heart, 91
+
+You were a sophist, 156
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber’s note
+
+
+Minor punctuation errors have been changed without notice.
+
+Page number references in the index are as published in the original
+publication and have not been checked for accuracy in this eBook.
+
+Spelling was retained as in the original except for the following
+changes:
+
+Page vi: “_No’thboun’_ by Lucy Ariel” “_Northboun’_ by Lucy Ariel”
+Page 47: “its so involved and” “it’s so involved and”
+Page 66: “TOUCHE” “TOUCHÉ”
+Page 206: “an all-womens’ hotel” “an all-women’s hotel”
+Page 230: “Ah, little road” “Ah, little road all”
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76889 ***
generated by cgit v1.2.3 (git 2.25.1) at 2026-04-12 12:15:02 +0000