Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/102

80 homely garb. In standard English, without satire or humor that wisdom thus appears:

The gospel of work has been set forth by our poet in a four-act poetic drama entitled Caleb, the Degenerate. All the characters are Negroes. The form is blank verse—blank verse of a very high order, too. The language, like Shakespeare's—though Browning rather than Shakespeare is suggested—is always that of a poet. The wisdom is that of a man who has observed closely and pondered deeply. Idealistic, philosophical, poetical—such it is. It bears witness to no ordinary dramatic ability.

“Best bard, because the wisest,” says our Israfel. Verily. “Sage” you may call this man as well as “bard.” The proof is in poems and tales, apologues and apothegms. Joseph Seamon Cotter is now sixty years of age. Yet the best of him, according to good omens, is yet to be given forth, in song, story, precept, and drama. His nature is opulent—the cultivation began late and the harvest grows richer.

The chief event of his life, I doubt not, remains to be mentioned—a very sad one. This was the intimely death of his poet-son, Joseph S. Cotter, Jr. Born of this sorrow was the following lyric: