Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/238

216 this combination of gifts, he cannot but raise the highest expectations. I present in this place a poem in blank verse of nobly contemplative mood, suggesting far more, as the best poems do, than it says:

—No, no! Not tonight, my Friend, I may not, cannot go with you tonight. And think not that I love you any less Because this now I’d rather be alone. My heart is strangely torn; unwonted thoughts Have so infused themselves into my mind That altogether there is wrought in me A sort of hapless mood, whose phantom power Born perhaps of my own fantasies Has ta’en me. By its subtle spell I’m wooed and changed from what’s my natural self. I am so possessed I can but wish For nothing else save this and solitude. If in companionship I sought relief Yours indeed would be the first I’d seek. There is none other whom I so esteem, None who quite so perfect understands. Your presence always is a soothing balm, —Ne’er failing me when troubled. But tonight, Forgive me, Friend—I’d rather be alone. Leave me, let me with myself commune. Presently if no change come, I shall go Stand in the shadowed gorge, or where the moon Throws her silver on the rippling stream, List to the sounding cataract’s thundering fall, Or hark to spirit voices in the wind.