Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/54

32

“The women, restive ’neath our rule, Would learn to scorn our name, And from her deed to us would come Reproach and burning shame. “Then, gracious King, sign with thy hand This stern but just decree, That Vashti lay aside her crown, Thy Queen no more to be.” She heard again the King’s command, And left her high estate; Strong in her earnest womanhood, She calmly met her fate, And left the palace of the King, Proud of her spotless name— A woman who could bend to grief But would not bow to shame.

Those last stanzas are quite as noble as any that one may find in the poets whom I named as setting the American fashion in the era of Mrs. Harper. The poems of this gentle, sweet-spirited Negro woman deserve a better fate than has overtaken them.

Although this is not a history of American Negro poetry, yet a brief notice must be given at this point to two other writers too important to be omitted even from a swift survey like the present one. They are J. Madison Bell and Albery A. Whitman.