Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/213

Rh Tell me what’s the Negro doing? And what course is he pursuing? What achievements is he strewing By the way?” Many say he’s retrograding Very fast; Others say his glory’s fading,— Cannot last; That his prospects now are blighted, That his chances have been slighted, This his wrongs cannot be righted. Time has passed. Friends, lift up your eyes; look higher; Higher still. There’s the vanguard of our army On the hill. You’ve been looking at the rear guard. Lift your eyes, look farther forward; Thousands are still pressing starward— Ever will.

Roscoe C. Jamison was fortunate in leaving behind him a friend at his early death, some three years since, who treasured his fugitive verses sufficiently to gather them together, though but a handful, and send them out to the world in a little pamphlet. Fortunate also was he in another friend able to write his elegy: