Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/89

Rh That his verdict be true— Just a shift of the Truth, Stern, the Nazarene tried, But he tho’t of the Cross, And the blood from His side. “Your decision is false; Oh, have mercy on me.” But a voice from the sky, Whispered low. Strike three.

Of humorous verse there is very little produced by the Negro writers of these times. They take their vocation seriously. When their singing robes are on it is to the plaintive notes of the flute or the dolorous blasts of the trumpet they tune their songs.

These voices, and others like them, have but lately been lifted in song, they are still youthful voices, and they are but preluding the more perfect songs they are yet to sing. One voice that is now still, silenced lately in death, at the age of twenty-three years, has sung for them all what all feel:

Ashamed of my race? And of what race am I? I am many in one. Through my veins there flows the blood Of Red Man, Black Man, Briton, Celt, and Scot, In warring clash and tumultuous riot.