Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/103

Rh

The Son

Dead at the age of twenty-three years, Joseph S. Cotter, Jr., left behind a thin volume of lyrics, entitled The Band of Gideon, and about twenty sonnets of an unfinished sequence, and a little book of one-act plays. I will presently place the remarkable title-poem of his book of lyrics before the reader, but first I will give two minor pieces, without comment:

RAIN MUSIC

On the dusty earth-drum

Beats the falling rain;

Now a whispered murmur,

Now a louder strain.