Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/152

130 evinces the same divine gift in the author, exhibited in a poem no less original and no less deeply impressive—Mrs. Spencer’s At the Carnival. Here I will companion The Harlem Dancer with one from Mr. Dandridge, for the comparison will deepen the effect of each:

She danced, near nude, to tom-tom beat, With swaying arms and flying feet, ’Mid swirling spangles, gauze and lace, Her all was dancing—save her face. A conscience, dumb to brooding fears, Companioned hearing deaf to cheers; A body, marshalled by the will, Kept dancing while a heart stood still: And eyes obsessed with vacant stare Looked over heads to empty air, As though they sought to find therein Redemption for a maiden sin. ’Twas thus, amid force-driven grace, We found the lost look on her face; And then, to us, did it occur That, though we saw—we saw not her.

Returning to Mr. McKay, we may assert that his new volume of verse, Harlem Shadows,