Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/76

54 Rising or falling? Men or things? With dragging pace, or footsteps fleet? Strong, willing sinews in your wings? Or tightening chains about your feet? —James Weldon Johnson.

With slight regard for smooth words another declares his grievances, that all may understand:

Yes, I am lynched. Is it that I Must without judge or jury die? Though innocent, am I accursed To quench the mob’s blood-thirsty thirst? Yes, I am mocked. Pray tell me why! Did not my brothers freely die For you, and your Democracy— That each and all alike be free? —Raymond Garfield Dandridge.

So runs the dominant note of this poetry. But it would be unjust to the race producing it to convey the idea that this is the only note. The harp of Ethiopia has many strings and the brothers of Memnon are many. Sometimes the note is one of simple beauty, like that of a wild rose blossoming by the wayside. No reader could tell what race produced such a lyric as the one following, but any reader responsive to the beauty of art and to the truth of passion would assert its excellence:

I will hide my soul and its mighty love In the bosom of this rose, And its dispensing breath will take My love wherever it goes.