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)