EARLY ENGLISH AND AMERICAN POETRY, 1916–22
In Memoriam: Booker T. Washington
I vividly recall the noonday hour
You walked into the wide and well-filled hall:
We rose and sang, at the conductor’s call,
Dunbar’s Tuskegee hymn. A splendid tower
Of strength, as would a gardener on the flower
Nursed tenderly, you gazed upon us all
Assembled there, a serried, sable wall
Fast mortared by your subtle tact and power.
O how I loved, adored your furrowed face!
And fondly hoped, before your days were done,
You would look in mine too with paternal grace.
But vain are hopes and dreams!—gone: you are gone;
Death’s hand has torn you from your trusting race,
And O! we feel so utterly alone.
1916
Remorse
If I could bring you back once more
Just for one moment brief,
I would give you what you asked before,
The cherished myrtle leaf.
But ’tis a year now since you went,
Never to come again;
I wail, “I love you, I repent,
Forgive me,”—all in vain.
1916
My love she is sweet, and my love she is brown,
Oh brown is my love, and so sweet
Her wealth of black hair, and the cream-colored gown
Displaying her fairylike feet.
Her face it is sunny, her face it is round,
Oh round, sunny face of my love!—
The voice of my love, oh that beautiful sound
That maddens the spirits above!
The eyes of my love they are wonderful eyes
With lustre of most precious gold;
To gladden me all her soul’s fire in them lies,
And water to turn others cold.
The heart of my love, and the soul of my love!
The angels all envy her heart,
And the high gods descend from their white thrones above
For the magic her soul doth impart!
I love you, O African maid, from afar
I worship your heavenly smile;
But ne’er shall I touch you, O beautiful star,
With hands that can only defile.
1916
My Werther Days
My Werther days you ask me to forget,
And bid me fling my wailings in the fire
And wrench me from the grim past, and aspire
To hidden heights, by none discovered yet,
Beyond the world’s afflictive fume and fret.
Struck down by love, some have renounced desire
And risen high above Earth’s tumult, higher,
Their chastened hearts on things of heaven set.
But I am not among the favored few:
Amid the weeds of my once-flowering grove
I wander chanting madrigals of rue
I have not faith to turn mine eyes above,
The strangely-whirling world I but see through
The splintered window of my house of love.
1916
Invocation
Ancestral Spirit, hidden from my sight
By modern Time’s unnumbered works and ways
On which in awe and wonderment I gaze,
Where hid’st thou in the deepness of the night?
What evil powers thy healing presence blight?
Thou who from out the dark and dust didst raise
The Ethiop standard in the curtained days,
Before the white God said: Let there be light!
Bring ancient music to my modern heart,
Let fall the light upon my sable face
That once gleamed on the Ethiopian’s art;
Lift me to thee out of this alien place
So I may be, thine exiled counterpart,
The worthy singer of my world and race.
1917
To the White Fiends
Think ye I am not fiend and savage too?
Think ye I could not arm me with a gun
And shoot down ten of you for every one
Of my black brothers murdered, burnt by you?
Be not deceived, for every deed ye do
I could match—out-match: am I not Afric’s son,
Black of that black land where black deeds are done?
But the Almighty from the darkness drew
My soul and said: Even thou shalt be a light
Awhile to burn on the benighted earth,
Thy dusky face I set among the white
For thee to prove thyself of highest worth;
Before the world is swallowed up in night,
To show thy little lamp; go forth, go forth!
1918
The Conqueror
He has battled with Earth:
He has won;
Where once there were desert and dearth,
And jungles untouched by the sun,
Are altar and field and hearth:
He has fought the wild earth,
He has won.
He has conquered the Sea:
Proud he rides
Over the long white waves,
Over the frenzied tides,
Over the unmarked graves
Of creatures that fought, as he,
The great Sea.
And he goes through the Air
On wings.
He has won everywhere,
He has under control
Earth, Sea, and Air,
Yea, all things
But his Soul.
1918
Is it worth while?
This question ever I ask
As the eternal mile
I trudge along.
Sick of life’s thankless task,
My tongue too leaden for song—
O God! is it worth while?
Yet I must go on,
Though wearily I fare
Through the valley of despair.
I must go on and make no moan …
I would lie low in the clean, green grass and sleep,
In the silent night and deep;
But I must go, I must go on.
On through the pushing stream
Of mortals harsh and proud,
On through the clamorous crowd
That dissipates my dream.
All alone,
Through the splashing, lashing torrent,
Along the eternal mile,
I must go on
With this thought ever recurrent:
Is it worth while?
1918
The Dominant White
God gave you power to build and help and lift;
But you proved prone to persecute and slay
And from the high and noble course to drift
Into the darkness fro the light of day.
He gave you law and order, strength of will
The lesser peoples of the world to lead;
You chose to break and crush them through life’s mill
But for your earthly gains to make them bleed:
Because you’ve proved unworthy of your trust,
God—He shall humble you down to the dust.
You have betrayed the black, maligned the yellow;
But what else could we hope of you who set
The hand even of your own against his fellow;
To stem the dire tide that threatens yet?
You called upon the name of your false god
To lash our wounded flesh with knotted cords
And trample us into the blood-stained sod,
And justified your deeds with specious words:
Oh! you have proved unworthy of your trust,
And God shall humble you down to the dust.
This pain you gave us nothing can assuage,
Who hybridized a proud and virile race,
Bequeathed to it a bastard heritage
And made the black ashamed to see his face.
You ruined him, put doubt into his heart,
You set a sword between him and his kin,
And preached to him, with simple, lying art
About the higher worth of your white skin!
Oh White Man! You have trifled with your trust,
And God shall humble you down to the dust.
You blinded go, afraid to see the Truth,
Closing your eyes to and denying Beauty;
You stultify the dreams of visioned youth
All in the prostituted name of Duty.
You place your Seers with madmen, fools and rogues,
Their words distort and twist, despise their creed:
You choose instead the little demagogues
That will uphold you in your shameless greed:
Because you’ve proved unworthy of your trust,
Oh, He shall humble you!—down to the dust.
1919
An ugly figure, heavy, overfed,
Settles uneasily into a chair;
Nervously he mops his pimply pink bald head,
Frowns at the fawning waiter standing near.
The entire service tries its best to please
This overpampered piece of broken-health,
Who sits there thoughtless, querulous, obese,
Wrapped in his sordid visions of vast wealth.
Great God! if creatures like this money-fool,
Who hold the service of mankind so cheap,
Over the people must forever rule,
Driving them at their will like helpless sheep—
Then let proud mothers cease from giving birth;
Let human beings perish from the earth.
1919
The Little Peoples
The little peoples of the troubled earth,
The little nations that are weak and white;—
For them the glory of another birth,
For them the lifting of the veil of night.
The big men of the world in concert met,
Have sent forth in their power a new decree:
Upon the old harsh wrongs the sun must set,
Henceforth the little peoples must be free!
But we, the blacks, less than the trampled dust,
Who walk the new ways with the old dim eyes,—
We to the ancient gods of greed and lust
Must still be offered up as sacrifice:
Oh, we who deign to live but will not dare,
The white world’s burden must forever bear!
1919
’Tis but a modern Roman holiday;
Each state invokes its soul of basest passion,
Each vies with each to find the ugliest way
To torture Negroes in the fiercest fashion.
Black Southern men, like hogs await your doom!
White wretches hunt and haul you from your huts,
They squeeze the babies out your women’s womb,
They cut your members off, rip out your guts!
It is a Roman holiday, and worse:
It is the mad beast risen from his lair,
The dead accusing years’ eternal curse,
Reeking of vengeance, in fulfillment here.
Bravo Democracy! Hail greatest Power
That saved sick Europe in her darkest hour!
1919
Labor’s Day
Once poets in their safe and calm retreat
Essayed the singing of the fertile soil,
The workman, bare-armed in the noonday heat,
Happy and grateful at his peaceful toil;
But now their voices hollow sound and cold,
Like imitated music, false and strange,
Or half truths of a day that could not hold
Its own against the eternal tide of change.
For Labor, Lord, himself will limn his life
And sing the modern songs of hope and vision,
And write the inspired tale of long-drawn strife
While mocked the poor blind world in grim derision,
Until she opened wide her eyes in awe
To see a new world under labor’s law!
1919
The world in silence nods, but my heart weeps:
See, welling to its lidless blear eyes, pour
Forth heavily black drops of burning gore;
Each drop rolls on the earth’s hard face, then leaps
To heaven and fronts the idle guard that keeps
His useless watch before the august door.
My blood-tears, wrung in pain from my heart’s core,
Accuse dumb heaven and curse a world that sleeps:
For yesterday I saw my flesh and blood
Dragged forth by pale-faced demons from his bed
Lashed, bruised and bleeding, to a piece of wood,
Oil poured in torrents on his sinless head.
The fierce flames drove me back from where I stood;
There is no God, Earth sleeps, my heart is dead.
1919
Soul and Body
My soul, athirst, drinks eagerly the dew
That falls upon its parched lip;
My soul longs, aches for the bosom of the blue
And the star’s companionship;
But the flesh passion-fevered, passion-freighted
Soft and weak,
Passion-hungry, never sated,
While the higher things I seek,
While I struggle to be free,
And would grasp the laureled crown,
In the hour of victory
Drags me down.
1919
The crimson rides the universal wind,
The raven spreads his pinions, follows after,
The eagles, leaden-winged, are left behind:
The old foundations shake from sill to rafter
Deaf to the doubters’ jeers, the weaklings’ moans.
The toilers, tired of yielding and false giving,
Bend to the mighty task, with solacing groans,
Of making the earth fit for human living …
My ear is tuned unto new voices shrieking
Their jarring notes of life-exalting strife;
My soul soars singing, with flame forces seeking
The grandest purpose, noblest path of life:
Where scarlet pennants blaze like tongues of fire,
There—where high passion swells—is my heart’s desire.
1920
Samson
Samson, the chosen Nazarite, who ruled
The Jews for twenty years and judged their sins,
Snared in the web of flesh, by woman fooled,
Was captured by the hated Philistines.
But God remembered him in his downfall
And, in his blindness, gave him back his power,
Which nobly used he, at his gaoler’s call,
To save his soul in one grand crowning hour.
O sable Samsons, in white prisons bound,
Wounded and blinded, in your hidden strength
Put forth your swarthy hands: the pillars found,
Strain mightily at them until at length
The accursed walls, reared of your blood and tears,
Come crashing, sounding freedom in your ears.
1920
Long struggling under the Imperial heel,
Some dared not see the white flame of your star,
Dimmed by the loathsome shadow of your Tsar.
But men who clung to sacred dreams could feel
Some day you would put forth your arm of steel
And drag the mannikins from near and far,
Before the mighty people’s judgment bar,
To answer for the ruined commonweal …
Down from their high, dishonoured place you hurled
The cowed, incompetent, corrupted few;
The blood-bathed flag of a new life unfurled,
Revealed your soul alike to Slav and Jew:
The eyes of the too-long submissive world,
Lifted in golden hope, are turned to you!
1920
Song of the New Soldier and Worker
We are tired, tired, tired—we are work-weary and war-weary;
What though the skies are soft-blue and the birds still sing
And the balmy air of day is like wine? Life is dreary
And the whole wide world is sick and suffering.
We are weary, weary, weary, sad and tired and no longer
Will we go on as before, glad to be the willing tools
Of the hard and heartless few, the favoured and the stronger,
Who have strength to crush and kill, for we are fools.
We will calmly fold our arms sore from labouring, and aching,
We will not still feed and guard the hungry, hideous, huge machine 10
That yawns with ugly mouth, performs its grim task of life-breaking
Like a fat whore, coarse and brazen and obscene.
O, to pull the thing to pieces! O, to wreck it all and smash
With the power and the will that only holy hate can give;
Even though our broken bodies may be caught in the crash—
Even so—that children yet unborn may live!
1920
Joy in the Woods
There is joy in the woods just now,
The leaves are whispers of song,
And the birds make mirth on the bough
And music the whole day long,
And God! to dwell in the town
In these springlike summer days,
On my brow an unfading frown
And hate in my heart always—
A machine out of gear, aye, tired,
Yet forced to go on—for I’m hired.
Just forced to go on through fear,
For every day I must eat
And find ugly clothes to wear,
And bad shoes to hurt my feet
And a shelter for work-drugged sleep!
A mere drudge! but what can one do?
A man that’s a man cannot weep!
Suicide? A quitter? Oh, no!
But a slave should never grow tired,
Whom the masters have kindly hired.
But oh! for the woods, the flowers
Of natural, sweet perfume,
The heartening, summer showers
And the smiling shrubs in bloom,
Dust-free, dew-tinted at morn,
The fresh and life-giving air,
And the birds’ notes rich and clear:—
For a man-machine toil-tired
May crave beauty too—though he’s hired.
1920
A Hero of the Wars
He couldn’t fight the clever Huns in France;
They forced him to his knees and broke his lance.
Therefore, the Politicians called him home
To cool his poor, spurred heels and scheme and foam,
And spin a funny yarn of fairy snipers
And battles lost that made him clown of Ypres.
But when at last the Prime Ass did determine
To exterminate the wretched emerald vermine,
He sent him to the unregenerate isle,
His honour to redeem in English style.
There is no rival now eager to rob
This hero of the English ruling classes,
Who failed in France, of his notorious job
Of shooting down defenceless Irish masses.
1920
Reality
For one soul saved from wreck so many lost;
For one fair flower so many loathsome weeds;
For one calm sea so many tempest-tossed;
One act of love so many hateful deeds.
For one slight ray of hope a million fears;
One day of peace long bitter years of strife;
One hollow laugh a thousand genuine tears;
Such is the grim reality of life.
1920
Re-Affirmation
I am downhearted not, although it seems
The new birth is abortive in the West,
And men are turning from long-cherished dreams
Of world-wide freedom to ignoble rest.
I am discouraged not, although the foe—
Shameless, like boars disporting in the mud
Of their foul fen where nothing fair can grow—
Wallow obscenely in the workers’ blood.
I am despairing not, though in our ranks,
Hard-pressed and weak, are fools and fops and knaves, 10
Who with their selfish aims and wanton pranks
Would sell the Cause to be contented slaves.
What though I see the trusted and the tried
For many a year turn traitor at the last,
Go over to the seeming stronger side!—
My heart feels sick, but I am not downcast.
The babe bursts from the mother’s womb in pain,
The night is darkest just before the dawn,
The heavens turn black to bless the earth with rain,
I am disheartened not, I will keep on.
1920
The statesmen-hirelings its favour seek,
And the world’s news is under its control;
Great are the powers of the mighty clique
That owns the slaving peoples, body and soul.
Down in its shops and offices and streets
The toilers struggle, sullen, underpaid,
And pinch-faced poverty proud Plutus meets,
And pimps and harlots ply their wretched trade.
And in its gorgeous halls where gold holds sway
The smirking mother offers her young daughter
To haughty men for whom all women are play
Or babes, or ornaments, or sheep for slaughter:
Its system makes men parasites or brutes
And tends to make all women prostitutes.
1920
Battle
Last night I dreamed that in the deadly strife,
Where privileged power rules with ruthless might,
I saw my body, a corpse still breathing life,
Trampled and mangled, a bloody blackened sight.
If such should be my fate, I pray it will
Come to me sudden-swift, a keen sword-dart,
Sent deeply through my burning breast to still
The rhythmic beat of my rebellious heart.
So, I should have the grand end come to me,
While following the only way of duty
And questing for the soul of truth and beauty!
I’d go convinced that there could never be
A fairer life for truth or beauty’s flower,
While earth is ruled by man’s imperial power.
1920
The dancers have departed, dear,
And the last song has been sung;
The red-stained glasses mock my gaze
And the fiddle lies unstrung.
And I’m alone, alone once more,
Save for your sweet brown face
That comes reproachfully to me
In this unholy place.
I’ve kissed a thousand flowers, my own,
Gone drunk with their perfume;
But found out, when the madness passed,
You were the one pure bloom.
I’ve come to realise at last
How awful it may be
To cut adrift from sacred ties
And be completely free.
But life grows many flowers, my love,
Within its garden wall,
And passion’s are the strangest
And the deadliest of all.
1920
Reminiscences
When the day is at its dimmest
And the air is wild with snow,
And the city’s at its grimmest
In mine eyes there is a glow….
When the day is at its brightest
And the city is a dream,
And my heart is at its lightest,
In mine eyes there is a gleam;
For I’m thinking, O I’m thinking,
Of an old worn sugar-mill
Where the southern sun is sinking—
Gold and crimson—o’er the hill;
And I hear the toilers talking
As they shoulder pick and hoe,
And I watch their steady walking
To the quiet plain below.
O! I see the white stream dashing
Gay and reckless through the brake,
O’er the root-entwined rocks washing
Swiftly, madly to the lake;
O! I hear the waters falling,
Flowing, falling, flowing free,
And the sound of voices calling
O’er the billows of the sea.
1920
Love Song
Heart of the saffron rose,
Lines of the lily red,
Gold of the buttercup,
Dew of the daisies’ bed,
Flight of the rising bird
Luring me to the skies,
Smile of an evening star
Playing before mine eyes,
Rime of the silver morn
Fair on the green of trees,
Scent of the coffee blooms
Waking the drowsy bees;
Charming and beautiful,
Rare are these sights to see;
Is your fond heart to me.
1920
Sukee River
[Second Version]
Thou sweet-voiced stream that first gavest me drink,
Watched o’er me when I floated on thy breast,
What black-faced boy now gambols on thy brink,
Or finds beneath thy rocks a place of rest?
What naked lad doth linger long by thee,
And run and tumble in the sun-scorched sand,
Or heed the pea-dove in the wild fig tree,
While I am roaming in an alien land?
No wonder that my heart is happy never,
I have been faithless to thee, Sukee River.
When from my early wandering I returned,
Did I not promise to remain for aye?
Yet instantly for other regions yearned
And wearied of thee in a single day.
Thy murmurs sound now in my anguished ears,
Creating in my heart a world of pain;
I see thee wistful flowing down the years
And though I pine, afar I must remain:
No wonder that my feet are faltering ever,
I have been faithless to thee, Sukee River.
Though other boys may frolic by thy side,
I know their merry moods thou dost not heed
When I, O mother of my soul and bride,
Lie on strange breasts and on strange kisses feed.
Sometimes, kind fate permitting me, I dream
I am floating on thy bosom of deep blue,
A child again, beloved, unchanging stream;
But soon I wake to find it all untrue:
I vowed that never, never would we sever,
But I’ve been faithless to thee, Sukee River.
1920
Negro Spiritual
They’ve taken thee out of the simple soil,
Where the warm sun made mellowy thy tones
And voices plaintive from eternal toil,
Thy music spoke in liquid lyric moans;
They’ve stolen thee out of the brooding wood,
Where scenting bloodhounds caught thy whispered note,
And birds and flowers only understood
The sorrow sobbing from a choking throat;
And set thee in this garish marble hall
Of faces hard with conscience-worried pride,
Like convicts witnessing a carnival,
For whom an alien vandal mind has tried
To fashion thee for virtuoso wonders,
Drowning thy beauty in orchestral thunders.
1922
The White House
Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.
The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
A chafing savage, down the decent street,
Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.
Oh I must search for wisdom every hour,
Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,
And find in it the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!
Oh I must keep my heart inviolate,
Against the poison of your deadly hate!
1922
To the Intrenched Classes
Your power is legion, but it cannot crush,
Because my soul’s foundation is cast-steel,
And myriads of unseen bodies rush
From hidden bowers and shrines my wounds to heal.
Your petty irritants are tiny spears
That cannot pierce through my protecting mail
To mortal hurt, and all your Bourbon fears,
Quite warrantable, never will avail.
Mine is the future grinding down today,
Like a great landslip moving to the sea,
Bearing its freight of debris far away,
Where the green hungry waters restlessly
Heave mammoth pyramids and break and roar
Their eerie challenge to the crumbling shore.
1922
Alone
There is no wisdom in your ways for me.
I walk with you; my mind is far apart.
You have no magic power, no mystery,
To draw the fire out of my burning heart.
I see you trying with your little hand
To reach my mist-wrapped world and touch and hold
My flaming soul you cannot understand,
And scorning you I turn to stone, death-cold.
Oh like a nimble child that seeks his toy,
When fagged of brain he turns from thought outright,
I come to you for rest and simple joy,
Descending from the solitary height,
To pleasure with you, serving to fulfill
The lofty purpose of my driving will.
1922
The New Forces
In every place, however high, they lurk.
In the great buildings where the pale youths clerk,
In ships and in the treasured pits of earth,
They stir the depths of men and come to birth.
I feel their mighty presence flaming near,
Oh, hark, my soul! their voices everywhere.
1922
Moon Song
The moonlight breaks upon the city’s towers,
And falls amid cemented steel and stone,
Shedding its lustrous light like white-lipped flowers
Across the ruins of a storm wind-blown.
Upon the clothes behind the tenement
That hang like ghosts suspended from thin lines,
To lovely, living things indifferent,
Incongruous and strange the moonlight shines.
There is no magic from your presence here,
O moon, mad moon, tuck up your trailing robe,
Its silver seems so ancient and severe
Against the glow of one electric globe.
Go spill your beauty on the laughing faces
Of happy flowers of a thousand hues,
That wait on tiptoe in the wilding spaces
To drink your wine with heavy draughts of dews.
1922
Honeymoon
Sweet, be your body a rare figured rug
Upon which I may lay myself full length,
And drink your warm breath as a potent drug,
To make me amorous and increase my strength.
Let me be drunken with your passion’s wine.
Our days are foodless, yet I know no pains;
Your subtle presence is an anodyne
That deadens native hungers in my veins.
My heart beats in a wanton mood to move
With the strange rhythm of your spirit’s motion.
My soul’s a laden boat propelled by love,
And these uplifted days a heaving ocean
Whereon we drift, foam-sprinkled, shot with zest,
Desiring not to reach a port of rest.
1922