Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/78

56 may blow into oblivion all but five lines of an opus magnum, in which five lines alone was the laborious author a poet. Wise is the poet who writes but the five lines, as here:

Since Poets have told of sunset, What is left for me to tell? I can only say that I saw the day Press crimson lips to the horizon gray, And kiss the earth farewell. —Mary Effie Lee.

The theme may be as old as man and as common as humanity yet it can be made to be felt as poetic by one who has the magic gift, as here:

I cannot make my thoughts stay home; I cannot close their door; And, oh, that I might shut them in, And they go out no more!

For they go out, with wistful eyes, And search the whole world through; Just hoping, in their wandering, To catch a glimpse of you! —Winifred Virginia Jordan.

One’s find may be in The Poet's Ingle of a newspaper, where an unknown name is attached to