Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/145

Rh For the whining craven class of men Mr. Hawkins has little respect:

The man who complains When the world is all song, Or dares to sit mute When the world is all wrong; Who barters his freedom Vile honors to win, Deserves but to die With the vilest of men.

Upon the times in which we live his judgment is severe. His condemnation, however, bears witness to that earnestness of soul and that idealism of spirit which will not let the world repose in its wickedness. From a list of several poems attesting this I select the following as perhaps the most complete in form:

These the dread days which the seers have foretold, These the fell years which the prophets have dreamed; Visions they saw in those full days of old, The fathers have sinned and the children blasphemed. Hurt is the world, and its heart is unhealed, Wrong sways the sceptre and Justice must yield. We have come to the travail of troublous times, Justice must bow before Moloch and Baal; Blasphemous prayers for the triumph of crimes, High sounds the cry of the children who wail. Hurt is the world, and its heart is unhealed, Wrong sways the sceptre and Justice must yield.