Page:The New Negro.pdf/250

 Lit with cheap colored lights a basement den, With rows of chairs and tables on each side, And, all about, young, dark-skinned women and men Drinking and smoking, merry, vacant-eyed. A Negro band, that scarcely seems awake, Drones out half-heartedly a lazy tune, While quick and willing boys their orders take And hurry to and from the near saloon. Then suddenly a happy, lilting note Is struck, the walk and hop and trot begin, Under the smoke upon foul air afloat; Around the room the laughing puppets spin To sound of fiddle, drum and clarinet, Dancing, their world of shadows to forget.

'Tis best to sit and gaze; my heart then dances To the lithe bodies gliding slowly by, The amorous and inimitable glances That subtly pass from roguish eye to eye, The laughter gay like sounding silver ringing, That fills the whole wide room from floor to ceiling,— A rush of rapture to my tried soul bringing The deathless spirit of a race revealing. Not one false step, no note that rings not true! Unconscious even of the higher worth Of their great art, they serpent-wise glide through The syncopated waltz. Dead to the earth And her unkindly ways of toil and strife, For them the dance is the true joy of life.