Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/133

Rh Freedom’s heirs with banners blazing, Emblems of Democracy, At the magic light are gazing Battling with Autocracy. Through the night brave souls are marching With the armies of the Free; Where the Stars and Stripes o’er-arching Form a sheltering canopy. Allies! hold a front united! Shaping well our destiny; Let each brutal wrong be righted In the drive for Liberty!

The productions I have seen in the Negro magazines and newspapers from William Moore’s pen give me the idea of a poet distinctly original and distinctly endowed with imagination. If there appears some obscurity in his poems let it not be too hastily set down against him as a fault. Some ideas are intrinsically obscure. The expression of them that should be lucid would be false, inadequate. Some poets there needs must be who, escaping from the inevitable, the commonplace, will transport us out into infinity to confront the eternal mysteries. Mr. Moore does this in two sonnets which I will give to represent his poetic work: