Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/204

182 camps are more powerfully portrayed than anywhere else in American literature. The following poem will represent his writings in verse:

Filled with the vigor such jobs demand, Strong of muscle and steady of hand, Before the flaming furnaces stand The men who make the steel. ’Midst the sudden sounds of falling bars, ’Midst the clang and bang of cranes and cars, Where the earth beneath them jerks and jars, They work with willing zeal. They meet each task as they meet each day, Ready to labor and full of play; Their faces are grimy, their hearts are gay, There is sense in the songs they sing; While stooped like priests at the holy mass, In the beaming light of the lurid gas, Their jet black shadows each other pass, And their hammers loudly ring. What do they see through the furnace door, From which the dazzling white lights pour? Ah, more than the sizzling liquid ore They see as they gaze within! For a band of steel engirdles the earth, Binds men to men from their very birth, Through all that exists of any worth There courses a steely vein.