Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/74

52 record in song. All of a people’s history that is permanently or profoundly significant is distilled into poetry.

It is to the unknown poetry of a despised and rejected people that I call attention in these pages. One of this people’s poets sings:

We have fashioned laughter Out of tears and pain, But the moment after— Pain and tears again. —Charles Bertram Johnson.

And when he so sings we know there is one race above all others which these words describe. Another sings:

I will suppose that fate is just, I will suppose that grief is wise, And I will tread what path I must To enter Paradise. —Joseph S. Cotter, Sr.

And when he so sings we know out of what tribulations his resignation has been born. The resolution of despair cries out in the lines of another:

My life were lost if I should keep A hope-forlorn and gloomy face, And brood upon my ills, and weep, And mourn the travail of my race. —Leslie Pinckney Hill.