Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/80

58 He speaks with tones of whispering love, With feelings true and strong, And sings of sweetest joys above, For souls without a song.

Pride of race, no less than grief for wrongs endured, is one of the notes of this living verse. Eulogies of the men and women who have lived heroically for their people, giving vision, quickening aspiration, opening roads of advance, find a place in every volume of verse and in the pages of newspapers. Few white persons perhaps have paused to reflect how noteworthy this traditionary store of heroic names really is and how potent it is with the people inheriting it. Both practical and poetic uses—if these two things are different—it has. One cannot foretell to what reflections upon life the eulogist will be led ere he concludes. From an ode to Booker T. Washington, by Roscoe Riley Dungee, I take a stanza, by way of illustration:

Yet, virtue walks a path obscure, And honor struggles to endure, While arrogance and deeds impure Adorn the Hall of Fame. Still, power triumphs over right, And wrong is victor in the fight; Greed, graft, and knavery excite Vociferous acclaim.

It has become evident to those who have seriously studied the present-day life of the Negroes