Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/40

18 She hug me, an’ she kiss me, She wrung my han’ an’ cried. She said I wus de sweetes’ thing Dat ever lived or died. She hug me an’ she kiss me. Oh Heaben! De touch o’ her han’! She said I wus de puttiest thing In de shape o’ mortal man. I told her dat I love her, Dat my love wus bed-cord strong; Den I axed her w’en she’d have me, An’ she jes say, “Go long!”

In a very striking way these folk-songs of the plantation suggest the old English folk-songs of unknown authorship and origin—the ancient traditional ballads, long despised and neglected, but ever living on and loved in the hearts of the people. This unstudied poetry of the people, the unlettered common folk, had supreme virtues, the elemental and universal virtues of simplicity, sincerity, veracity. It had the power, in an artificial age, to bring poetry back to reality, to genuine emotion, to effectiveness, to the common interests of mankind. Simple and crude as it was it had a merit unknown to the polished verse of the schools. Potential Negro poets might do well to ponder this fact of literary history. There is nothing more precious in English literature than this crude old poetry of the people.