Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/130

108 much of suggestion to the reader of the poems which follow:

Blest be Foscati! You’ve heard tell How—spirit and flesh of him—blown to flame, Leaped the stars for heaven, dropped back to hell, And felt no shame. I here indite this record of his journey: The splendor of his epical will to perform Life’s best, with the lance of Truth at Tourney— Till caught in the storm. Of a woman’s face and hair like scented clover, Te Deums, Lauds, and Magnificat, he Praised with tongue of saint, heart of lover— Missed all, but found Foscati!

The warm October rain fell upon his dream, When once again the autumn sadness stirred, And murmured through his blood, like a hidden stream In a forest, unheard. The drowsy rain battered against his delight Of the half forgotten poignancies, That settle in the dusk of an autumn night On a world one hears and sees. One was, he thought, an echo merely, A glow enshadowed of truths untraced; But the autumn sadness, brought him yearly, Was a joy embraced.