Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/132

110 —are proof. No excerpts can fully reveal the distinctive quality of Mr. Margetson’s poetry—its sonorous and ever-varying flow, like a mountain stream, its descriptive richness in which it resembles his native islands. For he was born in the British West Indies, and there lived the first twenty years of his life. Coming to America in 1897, his home has been in Boston or its environment since that time. Educated in the Moravian School at St. Kitts, he has lived with and in the English poets from Spenser to Byron—Byron seems to have been his favorite—and so has cultivated his native talent. I can give here but one brief lyric from his pen.

In the East a star is rising, Breaking through the clouds of war With a light old arts revising Shattering steel and iron bar.