Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/216

194 I loved you, Dear. I did not know how true, Until in other eyes I found no light; I know—alas!—my Spirit without you Must drift forever in a starless night!

A different kind of merit, the merit of intense reprobation of cruel arrogancy in the one race and of treacherous cowardice in the other, is exemplified in The Edict. Triumphant faith, which is the Negro’s peculiar heritage, asserts itself in such a way, in the final stanza, as to lift the poem to the heights of moral feeling.

All these must die before the Morning break: They who at God an angry finger shake, Declaring that because He made them White, Their race should rule the world by sacred right. They who deny a common Brotherhood— Who cry aloud, and think no Blackman good— The blood-cursed mob always eager to take The rope in hand or light the flaming stake, Jeering the wretch while he in death pain quakes— All these must die before the Morning breaks. All these must die before the Morning breaks: The Blackmen, faithless, whose loud laughter wakes Harsh echoes in the most unbiased places. They who choose vice, and scorn the gentle graces— Who by their manners breed contemptuous hate, Suggesting jim-crow laws from state to state—