Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/268

246 The class of poems to follow will afford a contrast. They will bear witness to that pride of race, perhaps, which we of the white race have commended to the colored people:

Awake! Arise! Men of my race— I see our morning star, And feel the dawn breeze on my face Creep inward from afar. I feel the dawn, with soft-like tread, Steal through our lingering night, Aglow with flame our sky to spread In floods of morning light. Arise, my men! Be wide-awake To hear the bugle call For Negroes everywhere to break The bands that bind us all. Great Lincoln, now with glory graced, All Godlike with the pen, Our chattel fetters broke and placed Us in the ranks of men. But even he could not awake The dead, nor make alive, Nor change stern Nature’s laws, which make The fittest to survive. Let every man his soul inure In noblest sacrifice, And with a heart of oak endure Ignoble, arrant prejudice.