Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/235

Rh past the midnight hour, how that a soul at last gained its longed for power to win the distant height. There is a kingdom of earth, and of water and of air. Each has its own. The heavier cannot rise above its level, to the next and lighter zone The treasures of the soul’s desire, were treasures of earth, whose lightest joys were too heavy and too gross to be sustained in the finer, rarer atmosphere; and thus were as a leaden weight that anchored the soul to earth, without its being at all aware that the things it thought so pleasant and so fair, were shackles to bind it hard and fast; and make it impossible for it to gain the region that instinctively it felt and knew was the rightful place of its abode.

Yet one more prose-poem I will give, as a sort of coda to the series. It is taken from a paper-covered booklet entitled The Firstling, by William Edgar Bailey, from which The Slump, on page 65, was taken:

The wild rose silently peeps from its uncouth habitation, thrives and flourishes in its glory; its fragrant bud bows to sip the nectar of the morning. Its delicate blossom blushes in the balmy breeze as the wind tells its tale of adoration. Performing well its part, it withers