socialist form of government, and my favorite poet is
Claude McKay. And some day I hope to flee the shores
of this exquisite hell. My temperament is Latin. I abhor
all things Anglo-Saxon. I’d rather live in the squalor
of Mulberry Street, N. Y. (Little Italy) than at Irvington-on-the-Hudson.
I love bull fights and dislike baseball
games. I like dancing and dislike prayer meetings. I
love New York because it is crowded and noisy and an
outpost of Europe. Of my home here in Washington I
have not much to offer. I like Washington because it
has such a large share of Babbitts, both white and black.
And I like it because Georgia Douglas Johnson lives there
and on Saturday nights has an assembly of likable and
civilized people, and because it was from this Saturday
night circle that Jean Toomer, Richard Bruce, and Richard
Goodwin, the artist, went forth to fame and infamy.
THE BLACK MADONNA
Not as the white nations
know thee
O Mother!
But swarthy of cheek
and full-lipped as the
child races are.
Yet thou art she,
the Immaculate Maid,
and none other,
Crowned in the stable
at Bethlehem,
hailed of the star.
See where they come,
thy people,
so humbly appealing,
From the ancient lands
where the olden faiths
had birth.
Tired dusky hands
uplifted for thy
healing.
Pity them, Mother,
the untaught
of earth.
COUNTEE CULLEN
Born in New York City, May 30, 1903, and reared in
the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage,
Countee Cullen’s chief problem has been that of reconciling
a Christian upbringing with a pagan inclination.
His life so far has not convinced him that the problem is
insoluble. Educated in the elementary and high schools
of New York City, with an A.B. degree and a Phi Beta
Kappa Key from New York University, an M.A. from
Harvard, arrantly opposed to any form of enforced racial
segregation, he finds it a matter of growing regret that
no part of his academic education has been drawn from
a racial school. As a poet he is a rank conservative, loving
the measured line and the skillful rhyme; but not blind
to the virtues of those poets who will not be circumscribed;
and he is thankful indeed for the knowledge that should
he ever desire to go adventuring, the world is rife with
paths to choose from. He has said, perhaps with a reiteration
sickening to some of his friends, that he wishes any
merit that may be in his work to flow from it solely as the
expression of a poet--with no racial consideration to bolster
it up. He is still of the same thought. At present he
is employed as Assistant Editor of _Opportunity, A Journal
of Negro Life_.
His published works are _Color_, _The Ballad of the Brown
Girl_, and _Copper Sun_.
LINES TO OUR ELDERS
You too listless to examine
If in pestilence or famine
Death lurk least, a hungry gamin
Gnawing on you like a beaver
On a root, while you trifle
Time away nodding in the sun,
Careless how the shadows crawl
Surely up your crumbling wall,
Heedless of the Thief’s footfall,
Death’s, whose nimble fingers rifle
Your heartbeats one by weary one,--
Here’s the difference in our dying:
You go dawdling, we go flying.
Here’s a thought flung out to plague you:
Ours the pleasure if we’d liever
Burn completely with the fever
Than go ambling with the ague.
I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH
LIFE
(With apologies to the memory of Alan Seeger)
I have a rendezvous with Life
In days I hope will come
Ere youth has sped and strength of mind,
Ere voices sweet grown dumb;
I have a rendezvous with Life
When Spring’s first heralds hum.
It may be I shall greet her soon,
Shall riot at her behest;
It may be I shall seek in vain
The peace of her downy breast;
Yet I would keep this rendezvous,
And deem all hardships sweet,
If at the end of the long white way,
There Life and I shall meet.
Sure some will cry it better far
To crown their days in sleep,
Than face the wind, the road, and rain,
To heed the falling deep;
Though wet, nor blow, nor space I fear,
Yet fear I deeply, too,
Lest Death shall greet and claim me ere
I keep Life’s rendezvous.
PROTEST
I long not now, a little while at least,
For that serene interminable hour
When I shall leave this barmecidal feast,
With poppy for my everlasting flower.
I long not now for that dim cubicle
Of earth to which my lease will not expire,
Where he who comes a tenant there may dwell
Without a thought of famine, flood, or fire.
Surely that house has quiet to bestow:
Still tongue, spent pulse, heart pumped of its last throb,
The fingers tense and tranquil in a row,
The throat unwelled with any sigh or sob.
But time to live, to love, bear pain and smile,
Oh, we are given such a little while!
YET DO I MARVEL
I doubt not God is good, well-meaning, kind,
And did he stoop to quibble could tell why
The little buried mole continues blind,
Why flesh that mirrors him must some day die,
Make plain the reason tortured Tantalus
Is baited with the fickle fruit, declare
If merely brute caprice dooms Sisyphus
To struggle up a never-ending stair.
Inscrutable His ways are and immune
To catechism by a mind too strewn
With petty cares to slightly understand
What awful brain compels His awful hand;
Yet do I marvel at this curious thing:
To make a poet black, and bid him sing!
TO LOVERS OF EARTH: FAIR
WARNING
Give over to high things the fervent thought
You waste on Earth; let down the righteous bar
Against a wayward peace too dearly bought
Upon this pale and passion-frozen star.
Sweethearts and friends, are they not loyal? Far
More fickle, false, perverse, far more unkind,
Is Earth to those who give her heart and mind.
And you whose lusty youth her snares intrigue,
Who glory in her seas, swear by her clouds,
With Age, man’s foe, Earth ever is in league.
Time resurrects her even while he crowds
Your bloom to dust, and lengthens out your shrouds
A day’s length or a year’s. She will be young
When your last cracked and quivering note is sung.
She will remain the Earth, sufficient still
Though you are gone, and with you that rare loss
That vanishes with your bewildered will;
And there shall flame no red, indignant cross
For you, no quick white scar of wrath emboss
The sky, no blood drip from a wounded moon,
And not a single star chime out of tune.
FROM THE DARK TOWER
We shall not always plant while others reap
The golden increment of bursting fruit,
Not always countenance, abject and mute,
That lesser men should hold their brothers cheap;
Not everlastingly while others sleep
Shall we beguile their limbs with mellow flute,
Not always bend to some more subtle brute;
We were not made eternally to weep.
The night whose sable breast relieves the stark
White stars is no less lovely, being dark;
And there are buds that cannot bloom at all
In light, but crumple, piteous, and fall;
So in the dark we hide the heart that bleeds,
And wait, and tend our agonizing seeds.
TO JOHN KEATS, POET, AT
SPRINGTIME
I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;
There never was a spring like this;
It is an echo, that repeats
My last year’s song and next year’s bliss.
I know, in spite of all men say
Of Beauty, you have felt her most.
Yea, even in your grave her way
Is laid. Poor, troubled, lyric ghost,
Spring never was so fair and dear
As Beauty makes her seem this year.
I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;
I am as helpless in the toil
Of Spring as any lamb that bleats
To feel the solid earth recoil
Beneath his puny legs. Spring beats
Her tocsin call to those who love her,
And lo! the dogwood petals cover
Her breast with drifts of snow, and sleek
White gulls fly screaming to her, and hover
About her shoulders, and kiss her cheek,
While white and purple lilacs muster
A strength that bears them to a cluster
Of color and odor; for her sake
All things that slept are now awake.
And you and I, shall we lie still,
John Keats, while Beauty summons us?
Somehow I feel your sensitive will
Is pulsing up some tremulous
Sap road of a maple tree, whose leaves
Grow music as they grow, since your
Wild voice is in them, a harp that grieves
For life that opens death’s dark door.
Though dust, your fingers still can push
The Vision Splendid to a birth,
Though now they work as grass in the hush
Of the night on the broad sweet page of the earth.
“John Keats is dead,” they say, but I
Who hear your full insistent cry
In bud and blossom, leaf and tree,
Know John Keats still writes poetry.
And while my head is earthward bowed
To read new life sprung from your shroud,
Folks seeing me must think it strange
That merely spring should so derange
My mind. They do not know that you,
John Keats, keep revel with me, too.
FOUR EPITAPHS
1
_For My Grandmother_
This lovely flower fell to seed;
Work gently sun and rain;
She held it as her dying creed
That she would grow again.
2
_For John Keats, Apostle of Beauty_
Not writ in water nor in mist,
Sweet lyric throat, thy name.
Thy singing lips that cold death kissed
Have seared his own with flame.
3
_For Paul Laurence Dunbar_
Born of the sorrowful of heart
Mirth was a crown upon his head;
Pride kept his twisted lips apart
In jest, to hide a heart that bled.
4
_For a Lady I Know_
She even thinks that up in heaven
Her class lies late and snores,
While poor black cherubs rise at seven
To do celestial chores.
INCIDENT
Once riding in old Baltimore,
Heart-filled, head-filled with glee,
I saw a Baltimorean
Keep looking straight at me.
Now I was eight and very small,
And he was no whit bigger,
And so I smiled, but he poked out
His tongue and called me, “Nigger.”
I saw the whole of Baltimore
From May until December:
Of all the things that happened there
That’s all that I remember.
DONALD JEFFREY HAYES
Donald Jeffrey Hayes was born November 16, 1904, in
Raleigh, N. C. At the age of five his parents brought him
to Atlantic City, N. J., where he attended the public
schools through the freshman year of High School. In
1913 he moved with his family to Pleasantville, N. J.,
where in his sophomore year of High School he was
awarded, after a near student strike, court action and the
dismissal of a member of the faculty--the highest debating
honors. Following this unpleasantness, he went to Chicago
where he studied privately the forms of poetry while completing
his High School work. He graduated in 1926 from
Englewood an honor student, and distinguished, as it were,
as “The poet of Englewood” and “The Bronze God” as his
fellow students dubbed him.
He is at present planning a volume of his verse and
studying the voice, planning to make his career in the
concert field.
INSCRIPTION
He wrote upon his heart
As on the door of some dark ancient house:
Who once lived here has long been dead
As dead as moss-grown stone
Only a ghost inhabits here
One that would be alone
Only a ghost inhabits here
A ghost without desire
Who sits before a shadowed hearth
And warms to a spectral fire....
AUF WIEDERSEHEN
I shall come this way again
On some distant morrow
When the red and golden leaves
Have fallen on my sorrow...!
I shall come this way again
When this day is rotten
In the grave of yesterdays
And this hour forgotten...!
I shall come this way again
Before the lamp light dies
To comfort you and dry the tear
Of penance from your eyes...!
NIGHT
Night like purple flakes of snow
Falls with ease
Catching on the roofs of houses
In the tops of trees
Down upon the distant grass
And the distant flower
It will drift into this room
In an hour....
CONFESSION
She kneeled before me begging
That I should with a prayer
Give her absolution
(How golden was her hair!)
She begged an absolution
While the moments fled
She thought my tears were pity
(My soul her lips were red!)
She begged of me forgiveness
God you understand
(For pale and soft and slender
Was her dainty hand!)
She begged that I should pray You
That her Soul might rest
But I could not pray O Master
(Ivory was her breast!)
NOCTURNE
Softly blow lightly
O twilight breeze
Scarcely bend slightly
O silver trees:
Night glides slowly down hill ... down stream
Bringing a myriad star-twinkling dream....
Softly blow lightly
O twilight breeze
Scarcely bend slightly
O silver trees:
Night will spill sleep in your day weary eye
While a soft yellow moon steals down the sky....
Softly blow
Scarcely bend
So ...!
Lullaby....
AFTER ALL
After all and after all
When the song is sung
And swallowed up in silence
It were more real unsung....
After all and after all
When the lips have stirred
Such a little of the thought
Is transmuted in the word....
Suffer not my ears with hearing
Suffer not your thoughts with speech.
Let us feel into our meaning
And thus know the all of each.
JONATHAN HENDERSON BROOKS
I was born on a farm twelve miles southwest of Lexington,
Mississippi, in 1904. When I was eleven years
old our family was disunited by divorce. My three sisters
and only brother went with father while I chose to become
my mother’s “little ploughman.” We worked around on
“half shares” in the community of my birth until I was
fourteen, and then my mother, who had managed somehow
to save enough money to keep me in school for four
months, sent me to Jackson College. It was here that I
received my first material recognition for writing when
I was awarded the first prize in a local contest for my
first story, entitled “The Bible In The Cotton Field.”
Mother’s plan was to send me back to Jackson College
again the following year, but the white landlord took her
entire crop of four bales to cover the land rent of my
uncle with whom we had gone to live in Humphreys
County that year.
My formal education has been interrupted more than
once by periods of farming and teaching. I moved up
my years and taught two five-months sessions in Humphreys
County before I finished my high school work. In
the fall of 1923 I matriculated at Lincoln University,
Missouri, and graduated from its high school department
in June 1925 with salutatory honors. Lincoln was very
kind to me during those two years--the happiest I have
known in all my life. It gave me work enough to cover
my expenses while attending there, twice chose me the
president of my class, and bestowed upon me each of the
three first prizes it offers in the high school department,
besides electing me class poet and giving me a host of
staunch friends.
I am now pursuing my college work at Tougaloo College
and am part time pastor of the second Baptist Church
of Kosciusko, Mississippi.
THE RESURRECTION
His friends went off and left Him dead
In Joseph’s subterranean bed,
Embalmed with myrrh and sweet aloes,
And wrapped in snow-white burial clothes.
Then shrewd men came and set a seal
Upon His grave, lest thieves should steal
His lifeless form away, and claim
For Him an undeserving fame.
“There is no use,” the soldiers said,
“Of standing sentries by the dead.”
Wherefore, they drew their cloaks around
Themselves, and fell upon the ground,
And slept like dead men, all night through,
In the pale moonlight and chilling dew.
A muffled whiff of sudden breath
Ruffled the passive air of death.
He woke, and raised Himself in bed;
Recalled how He was crucified;
Touched both hands’ fingers to His head,
And lightly felt His fresh-healed side.
Then with a deep, triumphant sigh,
He coolly put His grave-clothes by--
Folded the sweet, white winding sheet,
The toweling, the linen bands,
The napkin, all with careful hands--
And left the borrowed chamber neat.
His steps were like the breaking day:
So soft across the watch He stole,
He did not wake a single soul,
Nor spill one dewdrop by the way.
Now Calvary was loveliness:
Lilies that flowered thereupon
Pulled off the white moon’s pallid dress,
And put the morning’s vesture on.
“Why seek the living among the dead?
He is not here,” the angel said.
The early winds took up the words,
And bore them to the lilting birds,
The leafing trees, and everything
That breathed the living breath of spring.
THE LAST QUARTER MOON OF
THE DYING YEAR
The last quarter moon of the dying year,
Pendant behind a naked cottonwood tree
On a frosty, dawning morning
With the back of her silver head
Turned to the waking sun.
Quiet like the waters
Of Galilee
After the Lord had bid them
“Peace, be still.”
O silent beauty, indescribable!
Dead, do they say?
Would God that I shall seem
So beautiful in death.
PAEAN
Across the dewy lawn she treads
Before the sun awakes
While lush, green grasses bow their heads
To kiss the tracks she makes.
The violets, in clusters, stand
And stare her beauty through,
And seem so happy in her hand,
They know not what to do.
She must have come whence zephyrs blow,
From sprites’ or angels’ lands;
Her heart is meet for God to know--
Oh, heaven is where she stands!
GLADYS MAY CASELY HAYFORD
“I was born at Axim on the African Gold Coast in 1904
on the 11th of May to singularly cultured and intellectual
parents, my mother being one of the daughters of Judge
Smith, the first Judge of the Excomission Court of Sierra
Leone, and my father being one of the three pioneer lawyers
of the Gold Coast.
I am a Fanti, of the Fanti tribe which spreads from
Axim right down the Gold Coast, to Acera, and is subdivided
into groups speaking different dialects. It is said
that the Acera branch, at one time, wandered away from
the main body and eventually arrived also at the sea coast,
speaking another tongue, but retaining the same customs.
I spent five years in England, three of which were spent
in school. I went to Penrohs College, Colwyn Bay in
Wales, and on my return home became a school teacher
in The Girls Vocational School, Sierra Leone.
By twenty, I had the firm conviction that I was meant
to write for Africa. This was accentuated by the help
which our boys and girls need so much and fired by the
determination to show those who are prejudiced against
colour, that we deny inferiority to them, spiritually, intellectually
and morally; and to prove it.
I argued that the first thing to do, was to imbue our
own people with the idea of their own beauty, superiority
and individuality, with a love and admiration for our own
country, which has been systematically suppressed. Consequently
I studied the beautiful points of Negro physique,
texture of skin, beauty of hair, soft sweetness of
eyes, charm of curves, so that none should think it a
shame to be black, but rather a glorious adventure.”
NATIVITY
Within a native hut, ere stirred the dawn,
Unto the Pure One was an Infant born
Wrapped in blue lappah that his mother dyed.
Laid on his father’s home-tanned deer-skin hide
The babe still slept by all things glorified.
Spirits of black bards burst their bonds and sang,
“Peace upon earth” until the heavens rang.
All the black babies who from earth had fled,
Peeped through the clouds, then gathered round His head.
Telling of things a baby needs to do,
When first he opens his eyes on wonders new;
Telling Him that to sleep was sweeter rest,
All comfort came from His black mother’s breast.
Their gifts were of Love caught from the springing sod,
Whilst tears and laughter were the gifts of God.
Then all the wise men of the past stood forth
Filling the air East, West, and South and North;
And told him of the joys that wisdom brings
To mortals in their earthly wanderings.
The children of the past shook down each bough,
Wreathed Frangepani blossoms for His brow;
They put pink lilies in His mother’s hand,
And heaped for both the first fruits of the land.
His father cut some palm fronds that the air
Be coaxed to zephyrs while He rested there.
Birds trilled their hallelujahs; and the dew
Trembled with laughter till the babe laughed too.
All the black women brought their love so wise,
And kissed their motherhood into his mother’s eyes.
Note: lappah--a straight woven cloth tied round the waist to form a
skirt.
Frangepani--An African flower.
RAINY SEASON LOVE SONG
Out of the tense awed darkness, my Frangepani comes;
Whilst the blades of Heaven flash round her, and the roll of thunder drums
My young heart leaps and dances, with exquisite joy and pain,
As storms within and storms without I meet my love in the rain.
“The rain is in love with you darling; it’s kissing you everywhere,
Rain pattering over your small brown feet, rain in your curly hair;
Rain in the vale that your twin breasts make, as in delicate mounds they
rise,
I hope there is rain in your heart, Frangepani, as rain half fills your
eyes.”
Into my hands she cometh, and the lightning of my desire
Flashes and leaps about her, more subtle than Heaven’s fire;
“The lightning’s in love with you darling; it is loving you so much,
That its warm electricity in you pulses wherever I may touch.
When I kiss your lips and your eyes, and your hands like twin flowers
apart,
I know there is lightning, Frangepani, deep in the depths of your heart.”
The thunder rumbles about us, and I feel its triumphant note
As your warm arms steal around me; and I kiss your dusky throat;
“The thunder’s in love with you darling. It hides its power in your breast.
And I feel it stealing o’er me as I lie in your arms at rest.
I sometimes wonder, beloved, when I drink from life’s proffered bowl,
Whether there’s thunder hidden in the innermost parts of your soul.”
Out of my arms she stealeth; and I am left alone with the night,
Void of all sounds save peace, the first faint glimmer of light.
Into the quiet, hushed stillness my Frangepani goes.
Is there peace within like the peace without? Only the darkness knows.
THE SERVING GIRL
The calabash wherein she served my food,
Was smooth and polished as sandalwood:
Fish, as white as the foam of the sea,
Peppered, and golden fried for me.
She brought palm wine that carelessly slips
From the sleeping palm tree’s honeyed lips.
But who can guess, or even surmise
The countless things she served with her eyes?
BABY COBINA
BROWN BABY COBINA, with his large black velvet eyes,
His little coos of ecstacies, his gurgling of surprise,
With brass bells on his ankles, that laugh where’er he goes,
It’s so rare for bells to tinkle, above brown dimpled toes.
BROWN BABY COBINA is so precious that we fear
Something might come and steal him, when we grownups are not near;
So we tied bells on his ankles, and kissed on them this charm--
“Bells, guard our Baby Cobina from all devils and all harm.”
LUCY ARIEL WILLIAMS
Lucy Ariel Williams was born in Mobile, Alabama,
March 3, 1905. Her parents, Dr. and Mrs. H. Roger
Williams surrounded her with the aesthetic and cultural
environment usually given the only daughters in professional
homes in the South. Miss Williams is well known
as a modiste, poet and extremely talented pianist. Her
early training was acquired at Emerson Institute, Mobile,
Alabama. Later she was graduated from Talladega College
and Fisk University, after which she attended Oberlin
Conservatory of Music, Oberlin, Ohio. Although a
first year student there, she received third year classification,
being the first member of her race to be so honored.
Her work has appeared in _Opportunity_ and other journals.
Her poem “Northboun’” received first prize in the _Opportunity_
contest for 1926.
NORTHBOUN’
O’ de wurl’ ain’t flat,
An’ de wurl’ ain’t roun’,
H’it’s one long strip
Hangin’ up an’ down--
Jes’ Souf an’ Norf;
Jes’ Norf an’ Souf.
Talkin’ ’bout sailin’ ’round de wurl’--
Huh! I’d be so dizzy my head ’ud twurl.
If dis heah earf wuz jes’ a ball
You no the people all ’ud fall.
O’ de wurl’ ain’t flat,
An’ de wurl’ ain’t roun’,
H’it’s one long strip
Hangin’ up an’ down--
Jes’ Souf an’ Norf;
Jes’ Norf an’ Souf.
Talkin’ ’bout the City whut Saint John saw--
Chile you oughta go to Saginaw;
A nigger’s chance is “finest kind,”
An’ pretty gals ain’t hard to find.
Huh! de wurl’ ain’t flat,
An’ de wurl’ ain’t roun’,
Jes’ one long strip
Hangin’ up an’ down.
Since Norf is up,
An’ Souf is down,
An’ Hebben is up,
I’m upward boun’.
GEORGE LEONARD ALLEN
I was born in Lumberton, North Carolina, September
10, 1905. My parents, Professor and Mrs. D. P. Allen,
were then in charge of Whitin Normal School, a thriving
secondary school which was discontinued at my father’s
death some ten years ago.
My high school days were spent at Redstone Academy,
located at Lumberton. I can think of nothing of interest
to mention concerning this period, except that I was an
omnivorous reader, and learned to love literature, and
especially poetry, with a passionate intensity.
Four years of college at Johnson C. Smith University
followed, during which time I studied a little, read a great
deal, and dabbled in music and literature. Among other
things, I experimented with the piano enough to become
a fairly advanced performer.