Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/126

104 Forget not, O my brothers, how we gave Red blood to save the freedom of the world! We were not free, our tawny hands were tied; But Belgium’s plight and Serbia’s woes we shared Each rise of sun or setting of the moon. So when the bugle blast had called us forth We went not like the surly brute of yore, But, as the Spartan, proud to give the world The freedom that we never knew nor shared. These chains, O brothers mine, have weighed us down As Samson in the temple of the gods; Unloosen them and let us breathe the air That makes the goldenrod the flower of Christ; For we have been with thee in No Man’s Land, Through lake of fire and down to Hell itself; And now we ask of thee our liberty, Our freedom in the land of Stars and Stripes. I am glad that the Prince of Peace is hovering over No Man’s Land.

From the Preface of Adolphus Johnson’s The Silver Chord I will take a paragraph that is more poetic and perfect in expression than any stanza in his book. Poetry, I think, is in him, but when he wrote these rhymes he was not yet sufficiently disciplined in expression. But this is how he can say a thing in prose:

“As the Goddess of Music takes down her lute, touches its silver chords, and sets the summer melodies of nature to words, so an inspiration