Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/207

Rh what might to another man, in the middle years of his life, have seemed a bitter loss, but of love, and exhortation, and encouragement. Blind, he lives in the Light. In his little book, entitled Daddy’s Love and Other Poems, are poems witnessing to a beautiful spirit, poems of beauty. Because of its sage counsel, however, I pass over some of these lovelier expressions of sentiment and choose a didactic piece:

I speak to you, my Colored boys, I bid you to be men, Don’t put yourselves upon the rack Like pigeons in a pen. Come out and face life’s problem, boys, With faith and courage too, And justify that wondrous faith, Abe Lincoln had in you. Don’t treat life as a little toy, A dance or a game of ball;