Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/97

Rh “I can all but touch my star,” cried the Boy.

“I am not so certain of that,” remarked the Snake. “I have watched your kind and ever see some of myself in them. Stings are nearer than stars.”

The Boy answered by meditating upon the picture and music. The Snake departed, saying that stings and stars cannot keep company.

The Boy journeyed on, ever led by the star. Some distance away the Mule was bemoaning the presence of his heels and trying to rid himself of them by kicking a tree. The Hog was dividing his time between looking into a brook and rubbing his snout on a rock to shorten it. The Snake lay dead of its own bite. The Boy journeyed on, led by an ever inviting star.

(Negro Tales.—Joseph S. Cotter, The Cosmopolitan Press, New York, 1912.)

Yes—Uncle Remus, in reality—and not exactly so. No copy. Not every like is the same. An Uncle Remus with culture and conscious art, yet unspoilt, the native qualities strong. And how poetic those qualities are!

Well might one expect a teacher, if he writes verse, to write didactic verse. But I think you will pronounce him to be an extraordinary teacher and verse-writer who writes as Mr. Cotter does, for example, in:

THE THRESHING FLOOR

Thrice blessed he who wields the flail

Upon this century's threshing floor;

A few slight strokes by him avail

More than a hundred would of yore.