Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/179

Rh life the Negro woman’s heart offers difficulties peculiar to itself. These various writers—talented, cultured, with the keen sensibilities of a specially sensitive people—have given us glimpses into some of the depths, not all. A poet of the other sex, Mr. McKay, with that divination which belongs to the poet, intimates in The Harlem Dancer, quoted on page 128, that the index of the heart is not always in the occupation or the face:

But, looking at her falsely-smiling face, I knew her self was not in that strange place.

No, her self was free and too noble to be smirched by the “passionate gaze of wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys.” It is a paradox that has puzzled a recent white novelist. Cissie Dildine, in Mr. Stribling’s Birthright, pilferer though she is, and sacrificer of her maidenhood, yet does not lose caste among her people. They speak affectionately of her and minister lovingly to her in jail, with no hint of