Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/101

Rh And sorrow, like a sorcerer,

Spread out her melancholy pall,

So that its folds enveloped all,

And each became her worshipper.

And not a single child was born

Through all the years thereafter;

If words sprang from the lips of scorn

None came from those of laughter.

Finally, the inhabitants of Hamelin are passing through death's portal, and when all had departed:

Like Dunbar, Cotter is a satirist of his people—or certain types of his people—a gentle, humorous, affectionate satirist. His medium for satire is dialect, inevitably. Sententious wisdom, irradiated with humor, appears in these pieces in