Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/201

Rh “Whom the gods love” and desire Fade and “die young.” Her life so loved on earth was brief, But yet withal so beautiful there is no cause, But in our loss, for grief.

This poet, formerly a school principal in Louisville, Kentucky, is now in Los Angeles, California, whither he took his tubercular son—in vain—endeavoring to establish there a sanitarium for persons of his race afflicted as his son was. For the third time: ad astra per aspera.

The following verses were written by a man in the Missouri State Penitentiary. He might prefer that his name be withheld. He will shortly go forth a free man and a better one—so resolved to be—with verses enough composed during his period of incarceration to make a small book:

Don’t be too quick to condemn me, Because I have made a bad start; Remember you see but the surface, And know not what’s in the heart. I may bear the marks of a sinful life, And I may have been a bit wild; But back of all remains this fact, That I am somebody’s child.