Page:The book of American negro poetry.djvu/22

xviii

I know de moonlight, I know de starlight;

I lay dis body down.

I walk in de moonlight, I walk in de starlight;

I lay dis body down.

I know de graveyard, I know de graveyard,

When I lay dis body down.

I walk in de graveyard, I walk troo de graveyard

To lay dis body down.

I lay in de grave an' stretch out my arms;

I lay dis body down.

I go to de judgment in de evenin' of de day

When I lay dis body down.

An' my soul an' yo' soul will meet in de day

When I lay dis body down."

Regarding the line, "I lay in de grave an' stretch out my arms," Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson of Boston, one of the first to give these slave songs serious study, said: "Never it seems to me, since man first lived and suffered, was his infinite longing for peace uttered more plaintively than in that line."

These Negro folksongs constitute a vast mine of material that has been neglected almost absolutely. The only white writers who have in recent years given adequate attention and study to this music, that I know of, are Mr. H. E. Krehbiel and Mrs. Natalie Curtis Burlin. We have our native composers denying the worth and importance of this music, and trying to manufacture grand opera out of so-called Indian themes.

But there is a great hope for the development of this music, and that hope is the Negro himself. A worthy beginning has already been made by Burleigh, Cook, Johnson, and Dett. And there will yet come great Negro