Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/262

240 Mr. Hawkins, whom I have quoted, entitled his book Chords and Discords. What did he mean by “discords”? Perhaps a disparagement of his muse’s efforts at music. Perhaps, and rather, something in the content, for the contrasts are sharp, the tones are piercing. These “discords” abound in contemporary Negro verse. Between the octave and the sestet of the following sonnet, by Mrs. Carrie W. Clifford, the discord is of the kind that stabs you:

Now quivering to life, all nature thrills At the approach of that triumphant queen, Pink-fingered Easter, trailing robes of green Tunefully o’er the flower-embroidered hills, Her hair perfumed of myriad daffodils: Upon her swelling bosom now are seen The dream-frail lilies with their snowy sheen, As lightly she o’erleaps the spring-time rills. To black folk choked within the deadly grasp Of racial hate, what message does she bring Of resurrection and the hope of spring? Assurance their death-stupor is a mask— A sleep, with elements potential, rife. Ready to burst full-flowered into life.

The Negro’s deep resentment of his wrongs has found its most artistic expression in the verse of a poet who came to us from Jamaica—Mr. Claude McKay. In another chapter I have given the reader an opportunity to judge of his merits. He