Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/62

40 of America needed, equally, both men, the counterparts of each other.

It needs to be remarked for white people, that there were two Dunbars, and that they know but one. There is the Dunbar of “the jingle in a broken tongue,” whom Howells with gracious but imperfect sympathy and understanding brought to the knowledge of the world, and whom the public readers, white and black alike, have found it delightful to present, to the entire eclipse of the other Dunbar. That other Dunbar was the poet of the flaming “Ode to Ethiopia,” the pathetic lyric, “We Wear the Mask,” the apparently offhand jingle but real masterpiece entitled “Life,” the incomparable ode “Ere sleep comes down to soothe the weary eyes,” and a score of other pieces in which, using their speech, he matches himself with the poets who shine as stars in the firmament of our admiration. This Dunbar Howells failed to appreciate, and ignorance of him has been fostered, as I have intimated, by professional readers and writers. The first Dunbar, the generally accepted one, was, as Howells pointed out, the artistic interpreter of the old-fashioned, vanishing generation of black folk—the generation that was maimed and scarred by slavery, that presented so many ludicrous and pathetic, abject and lovable aspects in strange mixture. The second Dunbar was the prophet robed in a mantle of austerity, shod with fire, bowed with sorrow, as every true prophet has been, in whatever time,