Negro Poets and Their Poems. Robert Thomas Kerlin
other race, or white or black,
When bound as thou wert, to the rack,
So seldom stooped to grieving;
No other race, when free again,
Forgot the past and proved them men
So noble in forgiving.
Go on and up! Our souls and eyes
Shall follow thy continuous rise;
Our ears shall list thy story
From bards who from thy root shall spring,
And proudly tune their lyres to sing
Of Ethiopia’s glory.
WITH THE LARK
Night is for sorrow and dawn is for joy,
Chasing the troubles that fret and annoy;
Darkness for sighing and daylight for song—
Cheery and chaste the strain, heartfelt and strong,
All the night through, though I moan in the dark,
I wake in the morning to sing with the lark.
Deep in the midnight the rain whips the leaves,
Softly and sadly the wood-spirit grieves.
But when the first hue of dawn tints the sky,
I shall shake out my wings like the birds and be dry; And though, like the rain-drops, I grieved through the dark, I shall wake in the morning to sing with the lark.
On the high hills of heaven, some morning to be,
Where the rain shall not grieve thro’ the leaves of the tree,
There my heart will be glad for the pain I have known,
For my hand will be clasped in the hand of mine own;
And though life has been hard and death’s pathway been dark,
I shall wake in the morning to sing with the lark.
WE WEAR THE MASK
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!
7. J. Mord Allen
In the year of Dunbar’s death (1906), J. Mord Allen published his Rhymes, Tales, and Rhymed Tales. The contents are mainly in dialect, dialect that possesses, as it seems to me, every merit of that medium. There is great felicity of characterization, surprising turns of wit, quaint philosophy. In a later chapter I will give a specimen of Mr. Allen’s dialect verse, here two standard English poems. In both mediums his credentials are authentic, no whit less so than even Dunbar’s. Only the question arises why his muse became silent after this one utterance—for he was at the time but thirty-one years old. Perhaps poetry did not go with boiler-making, his occupation. Because of the date of his one book I place him here with Dunbar, and there are yet other reasons.
Mr. Allen affords but two standard English poems, the first and the last of his book. Such a fact marks him as of the elder day, though that day be less than a score of years agone. The concluding poem of his book has a sweet sadness that must appeal to every heart whose childhood is getting to be far away:
COUNTING OUT
“Eeny meeny miny mo.”
Ah, how the sad-sweet Long Ago
Enyouths us, as by magic spell,
With that old rhyme. You know it well;
For time was, once, when e’en your eyes
Saw Heaven plainly, in the skies.
Past twilight, when a brave moon glowed
Just o’er the treetops, and the road
Was full of romping children—say,
What was the game we used to play?
Yes! Hide-and-seek. And at the base,
Who first must go and hide his face?
Remember—standing in a row—
“Eeny meeny miny mo”?
“Eeny meeny miny mo.”
How fare we children here below?
Our moon is far from treetops now,
And Heaven isn’t up, somehow.
No more for sport play we “I spy”;
Our “laying low” and “peeping high”.
Are now with consequences fraught;
There’s black disgrace in being caught.
But what’s to pay the pains we take?
Let’s play the game for its own sake,
And, ere ’tis time to homeward flit,
Let’s get some pleasure out of it.
For death will soon count down the row,
“Eeny meeny miny mo.”
Though of the elder day yet Allen is, like Dunbar, a herald of the generation that is now articulate. In this rôle of herald to a more self-assertive generation, a more aspiring and race-conscious one, he speaks with immense significance to us in this first poem of his book, which, as being prophetic of much we now see in the colored folk of America I permit to close this summary review of earlier Negro poetry:
THE PSALM OF THE UPLIFT
Still comes the Perfect Thing to man
As came the olden gods, in dreams;
And then the man—made artist—knows
How real is the thing which seems.
Then, tongue or brush or magic pen
May win the world to loud acclaim,
But he who wrought knows in his soul
That, like as tinsel is to gold,
His work is, to his aim.
It’s there ahead to him—and you
And me. I swear it isn’t far;
Else, black Despair would cut us down
In the land of hateful Things Which Are.
But, just beyond our finger-tips,
Things As They Should Be shame the weak,
And hold the aching muscles tense
Through th’ next moment of suspense
Which triumph is to break.
And shall we strive? The years to come,
Till sunset of eternity,
Are given to the fairest god,
The God of Things As They Should Be.
The ending? Nay, ’tis ours to do
And dare and bear and not to flinch;
To enter where is no