Chapter I: Front Matter

CAROLING DUSK

_Books by Countee Cullen_

Color Copper Sun The Ballad of the Brown Girl The Medea The Lost Zoo My Lives and How I Lost Them On These I Stand One Way to Heaven

_Edited by Countee Cullen_

Caroling Dusk

CAROLING DUSK

_An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets_

Edited by COUNTEE CULLEN

HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London

CAROLING DUSK. Copyright 1927 by Harper & Brothers. Copyright renewed 1955 by Ida M. Cullen. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N. Y. 10022. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto.

ISBN: 0-06-010926-2

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 27-23175

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For permission to use the poems in this anthology, the editor wishes to thank the poets represented, and the following magazines and publishers:

Dodd, Mead and Co. for poems from _The Collected Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar_

Boni and Liveright for poems from _Cane_ by Jean Toomer

Alfred A. Knopf for poems from _The Weary Blues_ and _Fine Clothes to the Jew_ by Langston Hughes

The Viking Press for “The Creation” from _God’s Trombones_ by James Weldon Johnson

The Cornhill Publishing Co. for poems from _The Band of Gideon_ by Joseph S. Cotter, and from _Fifty Years and other Poems_ by James Weldon Johnson, and from _The Heart of a Woman_ by Georgia Douglas Johnson

Harcourt, Brace & Co. for poems from _Harlem Shadows_ by Claude McKay and for _A Litany of Atlanta_ by W. E. B. DuBois

Harper & Brothers for poems from _Color_ and _Copper Sun_ by Countee Cullen

B. J. Brimmer Co. for poems from _Bronze_ by Georgia Douglas Johnson

Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life for _Desolate_ and _My House_ by Claude McKay; _Old Black Men_ by Georgia Douglas Johnson; _Summer Matures_, _Fulfillment_, _The Road_ by Helene Johnson; _Portrait_ by George Leonard Allen; _For the Candlelight_ by Angelina Weld Grimké; _The Return_, _Golgotha Is a Mountain_, _The Day Breakers_, and _God Give to Men_ by Arna Bontemps; _I Have a Rendezvous With Life_ by Countee Cullen; _Lines Written at the Grave of Alexander Dumas_ and _Hatred_ by Gwendolyn B. Bennett; _Joy_, _Solace_, _Interim_ by Clarissa Scott Delany; _Confession_ by Donald Jeffrey Hayes; _On Seeing Two Brown Boys In a Catholic Church_ and _To a Persistent Phantom_ by Frank Horne; _Poem_ by Blanche Taylor Dickinson; _The New Negro_ by James Edward McCall; _The Tragedy of Pete_ and _The Wayside Well_ by Joseph S. Cotter, Sr.; _No Images_ by Waring Cuney; _Northboun’_ by Lucy Ariel Williams; _Shadow_ by Richard Bruce; _The Resurrection_ by Jonathan H. Brooks; _Africa and Transformation_ by Lewis Alexander

The Conning Tower of the New York World for _Noblesse Oblige_ by Jessie Redmond Fauset

The Crisis for _That Hill_ by Blanche Taylor Dickinson; _Nocturne at Bethesda_ by Arna Bontemps; _Letters Found Near a Suicide_ by Frank Horne; _Morning Light_ by Mary Effie Lee Newsome; _Dunbar_ by Anne Spencer

The Century for _My City_ by James Weldon Johnson

Vanity Fair for _Bottled_ by Helene Johnson

Palms for _A Tree Design_ by Arna Bontemps; _Lines to a Nasturtium_ by Anne Spencer; _Black Madonna_ by Albert Rice; _Words! Words!_ by Jessie Fauset; _Magula_ by Helene Johnson; and _The Mask_ by Clarissa Scott Delany

Fire for _Jungle Taste_ by Edward S. Silvera; _Length of Moon_ by Arna Bontemps; _The Death Bed_ by Waring Cuney

The World Tomorrow for _A Black Man Talks of Reaping_ by Arna Bontemps

The Survey for _Russian Cathedral_ by Claude McKay

The Atlantic Monthly for _Nativity_ and _The Serving Girl_ by Gladys Casley Hayford

The Carolina Magazine for _The Dark Brother_ by Lewis Alexander