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