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]