Chapter II: The Present Renaissance of the Negro (1)

_I. A Glance at the Field_

Many are the forms of expression that the life of a developing people or group finds for itself--business and wealth, education and culture, political and social unrest and agitation, literature and art. It can scarcely happen that any people or group has a vital significance for other peoples or groups, or any real potency, until it begins to express itself in poetry. When, however, a race or a portion of our common race begins to embody its aspirations, its grievances, its animating spirit in song the world may well take notice. That race or portion of our common race has within it an unreckoned potency of good and evil--evil if the good be thwarted.

It is not, then, to editorials and speeches and sermons, nor to petitions, protests, and resolutions, but to poems that the wise will turn in order to learn the temper and permanent bent of mind of a people. Witness the recent history of Ireland. Her literary renascence preceded her effective political agitation. The political agitation which resulted in her independence was the work of poets. The real life of a people finds its only adequate record in song. All of a people’s history that is permanently or profoundly significant is distilled into poetry.

It is to the unknown poetry of a despised and rejected people that I call attention in these pages. One of this people’s poets sings:

We have fashioned laughter
Out of tears and pain,
But the moment after--
Pain and tears again.
_Charles Bertram Johnson._

And when he so sings we know there is one race above all others which these words describe. Another sings:

I will suppose that fate is just,
I will suppose that grief is wise,
And I will tread what path I must
To enter Paradise.
_Joseph S. Cotter, Sr._

And when he so sings we know out of what tribulations his resignation has been born. The resolution of despair cries out in the lines of another:

My life were lost if I should keep
A hope-forlorn and gloomy face,
And brood upon my ills, and weep,
And mourn the travail of my race.
_Leslie Pinckney Hill._

Another singer, coming out of the Black Belt of the lower South, records the daily and life-long history of his people in these lines:

IT’S ALL THROUGH LIFE

A day of joy, a week of pain,
A sunny day, a week of rain;
A day of peace, a year of strife;
But cling to Him, it’s all through life.

An hour of joy, a day of fears,
An hour of smiles, a day of tears;
An hour of gain, a day of strife,
Press on, press on, it’s all through life.
_Waverley Turner Carmichael._

In the poetry which the Negro is producing to-day there is a challenge to the world. His race has been deeply stirred by recent events; its reaction has been mighty. The challenge, spoken by one, but for the race, the inarticulate millions as well as the cultured few, comes thus:

TO AMERICA

How would you have us--as we are,
Or sinking ’neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?
Rising or falling? Men or things?
With dragging pace, or footsteps fleet?
Strong, willing sinews in your wings?
Or tightening chains about your feet?
_James Weldon Johnson._

With slight regard for smooth words another declares his grievances, that all may understand:

Yes, I am lynched. Is it that I
Must without judge or jury die?
Though innocent, am I accursed
To quench the mob’s blood-thirsty thirst?

Yes, I am mocked. Pray tell me why!
Did not my brothers freely die
For you, and your Democracy--
That each and all alike be free?
_Raymond Garfield Dandridge._

So runs the dominant note of this poetry. But it would be unjust to the race producing it to convey the idea that this is the only note. The harp of Ethiopia has many strings and the brothers of Memnon are many. Sometimes the note is one of simple beauty, like that of a wild rose blossoming by the wayside. No reader could tell what race produced such a lyric as the one following, but any reader responsive to the beauty of art and to the truth of passion would assert its excellence:

I will hide my soul and its mighty love
In the bosom of this rose,
And its dispensing breath will take
My love wherever it goes.
And perhaps she’ll pluck this very rose,
And, quick as blushes start,
Will breathe my hidden secret in
Her unsuspecting heart.
_George Marion McClellan._

In a Negro magazine one may chance upon a sonnet that the best poet of our times might have signed and feared no loss to his reputation, nor would there be any mark of race in its lines. To candid judgment I submit the following, from Mrs. Alice Dunbar-Nelson:

VIOLETS

I had not thought of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thoughts of violets meant florists’ shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garish lights, and mincing little fops,
And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields and clear brown streams;
The perfect loveliness that God has made--
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams
And now unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.

It needs not that a poet write an epic to prove himself chosen of the muse. The winds of time may blow into oblivion all but five lines of an _opus magnum_, in which five lines alone was the laborious author a poet. Wise is the poet who writes but the five lines, as here:

SUNSET

Since Poets have told of sunset,
What is left for me to tell?
I can only say that I saw the day
Press crimson lips to the horizon gray,
And kiss the earth farewell.
_Mary Effie Lee._

The theme may be as old as man and as common as humanity yet it can be made to be felt as poetic by one who has the magic gift, as here:

LONELINESS

I cannot make my thoughts stay home;
I cannot close their door;
And, oh, that I might shut them in,
And they go out no more!

For they go out, with wistful eyes,
And search the whole world through;
Just hoping, in their wandering,
To catch a glimpse of you!
_Winifred Virginia Jordan._

One’s find may be in _The Poet’s Ingle_ of a newspaper, where an unknown name is attached to verses that have the charm which Longfellow found in the simple and heartfelt lays of the humbler poet. From such a poem, entitled _To My Grandmother_, by Mae Smith Johnson, I take two stanzas, the first two as beautiful as the theme evoked:

You ’mind me of the winter’s eve
When low the sinking sun
Casts soft bright rays upon the snow
And day, now almost done,
In silence deep prepares to leave,
And calmly waits the signal “Go.”

Your eyes are faded vestal lights
That once the hearth illumed,
Where vestal virgins vigil kept,
And budding virtue bloomed:
Like stars that beam on summer nights,
Your eyes, by joy and sorrow swept.

Less beautiful, less original, but in another way not less appealing, are these stanzas, also signed by an unknown name and taken from the Christmas number of a newspaper. They are the last stanzas but one of a poem entitled _The Child Is Found_, by Charles H. Este:

O hearts that mourn and sorrow so,
That doubt the power of God,
An angel now is bending low--
To comfort as you plod.

He speaks with tones of whispering love,
With feelings true and strong,
And sings of sweetest joys above,
For souls without a song.

Pride of race, no less than grief for wrongs endured, is one of the notes of this living verse. Eulogies of the men and women who have lived heroically for their people, giving vision, quickening aspiration, opening roads of advance, find a place in every volume of verse and in the pages of newspapers. Few white persons perhaps have paused to reflect how noteworthy this traditionary store of heroic names really is and how potent it is with the people inheriting it. Both practical and poetic uses--if these two things are different--it has. One cannot foretell to what reflections upon life the eulogist will be led ere he concludes. From an ode to Booker T. Washington, by Roscoe Riley Dungee, I take a stanza, by way of illustration:

Yet, virtue walks a path obscure,
And honor struggles to endure,
While arrogance and deeds impure
Adorn the Hall of Fame.
Still, power triumphs over right,
And wrong is victor in the fight;
Greed, graft, and knavery excite
Vociferous acclaim.

It has become evident to those who have seriously studied the present-day life of the Negroes that there has been in these recent years a renascence of the Negro soul. Poetry, as these pages will show, is one of its modes of expression. Other expressions there are, very significant ones, too, expressions which are material, tangible, expressible in figures. Not of this kind is poetry. Yet of all forms whereby the soul of a people expresses itself the most potent, the most effective, is poetry. The re-born soul of the Negro is following the tradition of all races in all times by pouring itself into that form of words which embodies the most of passionate thought and feeling.

Out of the very heart of a race of twelve million people amongst us comes this cry which a Negro poet of Virginia utters as

A PRAYER OF THE RACE THAT GOD MADE BLACK

We would be peaceful, Father--but, when we must,
Help us to thunder hard the blow that’s just!

We would be prayerful: Lord, when we have prayed,
Let us arise courageous--unafraid!

We would be manly--proving well our worth,
Then would not cringe to any god on earth!

We would be loving and forgiving, thus
To love our neighbor as Thou lovest us!

We would be faithful, loyal to the Right--
Ne’er doubting that the Day will follow Night!

We would be all that Thou hast meant for man,
Up through the ages, since the world began!

God! save us in Thy Heaven, where all is well!
We come slow-struggling up the Hills of Hell!
_Lucian B. Watkins._

Too confidently, as we may learn, have we of the other race relied upon the Negro’s innate optimism to keep him a safe citizen and a long-suffering servant. That optimism, that gaiety and buoyancy of spirit, if not indestructible in the African soul, is yet reducible to the vanishing point. There are signs of something quite different in the attitude of Negroes toward their white neighbors to-day. In their poetry this reputed optimism, where it exists, is found in union with a note of melancholy or of bitter complaint. A characteristic utterance of this mood I find in a poem entitled “The Optimist,” from which I will give one-third of its stanzas:

Never mind, children, be patient awhile,
And carry your load with a nod and a smile,
For out of the hell and the hard of it all,
Time is sure to bring sweetest honey--not gall.

Out of the hell and the hard of it all,
A bright star shall rise that never shall fall:
A God-fearing race--proud, noble, and true,
Giving good for the evil which they always knew.

* * * * *

So dry your wet pillow and lift your bowed head
And show to the world that hope is not dead!
Be patient! Wait! See what yet may befall,
Out of the hell and the hard of it all.
_Ethyl Lewis._

But in dark days the Negro has ever had refuges and sources of strength for the want of which other races have been crushed. One of these refuges for them is the benignant breast of nature--the deep peace of the woods and the hills, the quiet soothing of pleasant-running water, the benediction of bright skies. A rarely-gifted woman, Mrs. Georgia Douglas Johnson, singing her own consolation, with a pathos that pierces the heart, has sung for thousands of the women of her race else dumb alike in grief and in joy, and in mingled grief and joy:

PEACE

I rest me deep within the wood,
Drawn by its silent call;
Far from the throbbing crowd of men
On nature’s breast I fall.

My couch is sweet with blossoms fair,
A bed of fragrant dreams,
And soft upon my ear there falls
The lullaby of streams.

The tumult of my heart is stilled,
Within this sheltered spot,
Deep in the bosom of the wood,
Forgetting, and--forgot!

Death and the mysteries of life, the pain and the grief that flesh and soul are heirs to, the eternal problems that address themselves to all generations and races, produce in the soul of the Negro the same reactions as of old they produced in the soul of David or of Homer, or as, in our own day, in the soul of a Wordsworth or a Shelley. Of this we have a glimpse in the following lyric, from Walter Everette Hawkins:

IN SPITE OF DEATH

Curses come in every sound,
And wars spread gloom and woe around.
The cannon belch forth death and doom,
But still the lilies wave and bloom.
Man fills the earth with grief and wrong,
But cannot hush the bluebird’s song.
My stars are dancing on the sea,
The waves fling kisses up at me.
Each night my gladsome moon doth rise;
A rainbow spans my evening skies;
The robin’s song is full and fine;
And roses lift their lips to mine.

The jonquils ope their petals sweet,
The poppies dance around my feet;
In spite of winter and of death,
The Spring is in the zephyr’s breath.

This poetry but re-affirms the essential identity of human nature under black and white skins. But it will remind most of the white race of how ignorant they have been of that black race next door that is acquiring wealth and culture and is expressing in art and literature the spirit of an aspiring people--how ignorant of their real life, their very thoughts, their completely human joys and griefs. One of their poets was cognizant of this unhappy ignorance--the source of so much harshness of treatment--when he wrote:

My people laugh and sing
And dance to death--
None imagining
The heartbreak under breath.
_Charles Bertram Johnson._

Nothing weighs more heavily upon the soul of this race to-day than this everywhere self-betraying crass ignorance, made the more grievous to endure by the vain boast accompanying it, that “I know the Negro better than he knows himself.” This poetry in every line of it is a convincing contradiction of this insulting arrogancy. Essential identity, that is the message of these poets.

This kinship of souls and essential oneness of human nature, which Shylock, speaking for a similarly oppressed and outrageously treated people, pressed home upon the Christian merchants of Venice, finds typical expression in the following lines:

We travel a common road, Brother,--
We walk and we talk much the same;
We breathe the same sweet air of heaven--
Strive alike for fortune and fame;
We laugh when our hearts fill with gladness,
We weep when we’re smothered in woe;
We strive, we endure, we seek wisdom;
We sin--and we reap what we sow.
Yes, all who would know it can see that
When everything’s put to the test,
In spite of our color and features,
The Negro’s the same as the rest.
_Leon R. Harris._

It is to be expected that, notwithstanding the Anglo-Saxon culture of the producers of this poetry, the white reader will yet demand therein what he regards as the African traits. Perhaps it will be crude, artless, repetitious songs like the Spirituals. The quality of the Spirituals is indeed not wanting in some of the most noteworthy contemporary Negro verse. From Fenton Johnson’s three volumes of verse I could select many pieces that exhibit this quality united with disciplined art. For example, here is one:

I PLAYED ON DAVID’S HARP

(A Negro Spiritual)

Last night I played on David’s harp,
I played on little David’s harp
The gospel tunes of Israel;
And all the angels came to hear
Me play those gospel tunes,
As the Jordan rolled away.

The angels shouted all the night
Their “Glory, Hallelujah” shout;
Old Gabriel threw his trumpet down
To hear the songs of Israel,
On mighty David’s harp,
As the Jordan rolled away.

When death has closed my weary eyes
I’ll play again on David’s harp
The last great song in life’s brief book;
And all you children born of God
Can stop awhile and hear me play,
As the Jordan rolls away.

No less certain it is that many a reader will demand something more crude, more obscure, more mystical. Something, perhaps, at once ridiculous and wise--with big and strangely compounded words, ludicrously applied, yet striving at the expression of some peculiarly African idea. Of such verse I can produce no example. The nearest I can come to meeting such impossible demand is by submitting the following from William Edgar Bailey:

THE SLUMP

Mr. Self at the bat!
Well, we’re all at the bat--
For one thing or other,
For this or for that.
The ball may be hurled, in the form of this plea:
“Will you please help the poor?
God, have mercy on me!”
Mr. Self stops to think;
But the ball cuts the plate--
He’s aware that he slumped,
Grasps the bat,--but too late.
What you say, Mr. Ump?
Can it be? Yes, ’tis done!
“Well, I’ve said what I’ve said!”
Mr. Self,
Strike One!

Mr. Self’s face is grim.
’Tis the critical test--
For his heart, conscience-sick,
Heaves stern at his breast.
The Truth must be hurled, ’tis the law of the game;
If in life or in death,
If in falsehood or shame.
Mr. Self, strike the ball--
There’s a Tramp at your Gate!
Mr. Self still amazed--
And the ball cuts the plate.
Mr. Self murmured not;
The decision he knew,
“Well, you’ve done that before.”
Sighed the Ump.
Strike Two!

There’s the Beggar and Gate--
But his silver and gold,
Is amix with his blood;
A part of his soul.
The Nazarene stooped--as all Umpires will do,
With His eye on a line,
That his verdict be true--
Just a shift of the Truth,
Stern, the Nazarene tried,
But he tho’t of the Cross,
And the blood from His side.
“Your decision is false;
Oh, have mercy on me.”
But a voice from the sky,
Whispered low.
Strike three.

Of humorous verse there is very little produced by the Negro writers of these times. They take their vocation seriously. When their singing robes are on it is to the plaintive notes of the flute or the dolorous blasts of the trumpet they tune their songs.

These voices, and others like them, have but lately been lifted in song, they are still youthful voices, and they are but preluding the more perfect songs they are yet to sing. One voice that is now still, silenced lately in death, at the age of twenty-three years, has sung for them all what all feel:

THE MULATTO TO HIS CRITICS

Ashamed of my race?
And of what race am I?
I am many in one.
Through my veins there flows the blood
Of Red Man, Black Man, Briton, Celt, and Scot,
In warring clash and tumultuous riot.
I welcome all,
But love the blood of the kindly race
That swarths my skin, crinkles my hair,
And puts sweet music into my soul.
_Joseph S. Cotter, Jr._

“Sweet music in the soul”--that is heaven’s kind gift to this people, music of sorrow and of faith; music, low and plaintive, of hope almost failing; music, clear and strong, born of vision triumphant; music, alas, sometimes marred by the strident notes of hatred and revenge. Verily, poets learn in suffering what they teach in song.

In concluding this preliminary survey it should be reiterated that, if one meets here but with the rhythms and forms, as he may think, which are familiar to him in the poetry of the white race, he should reflect that only in that poetry has the Negro had an opportunity to be educated. He has been educated away from his own heritage and his own endowments. The Negro’s native wisdom should lead him back to his natural founts of song. Our educational system should allow of and provide for this. His own literature in his schools is a reasonable policy for the Negro.

As regards the essential significance of this poetry, one of its makers, Miss Eva A. Jessye, has said in a beautiful way almost what I wish to say. Her poem shall therefore conclude this presentation:

THE SINGER

Because his speech was blunt and manner plain
Untaught in subtle phrases of the wise,
Because the years of slavery and pain
Ne’er dimmed the light of faith within his eyes;
Because of ebon skin and humble pride,
The world with hatred thrust the youth aside.

But fragrance wafts from every trodden flower,
And through our grief we rise to nobler things,
Within the heart in sorrow’s darkest hour
A well of sweetness there unbidden springs;
Despised of men, discarded and alone--
The world of nature claimed him as her own.

She taught him truths that liberate the soul
From bonds more galling than the slaver’s chain--
That manly natures, lily-wise, unfold
Amid the mire of hatred void of stain;
Thus in his manhood, clean, superbly strong,
To him was born the priceless gift of song.

The glory of the sun, the hush of morn,
Whisperings of tree-top faintly stirred,
The desert silence, wilderness forlorn,
Far ocean depths, the tender lilt of bird;
Of hope, despair, he sang, his melody
The endless theme of life’s brief symphony.

And nations marveled at the minstrel lad,
Who swayed emotions as his fancy led;
With him they wept, were melancholy, sad;
“’Tis but a cunning jest of Fate,” they said;
They did not dream in selfish sphere apart
That song is but the essence of the heart.

_II. Representatives of the Present Era_

I. THE COTTERS, FATHER AND SON

_The Father_

On the Kentucky plantation where Stephen Collins Foster one June morning, when the mocking birds were singing and “the darkies were gay,” composed and his sister sang, “My Old Kentucky Home,” there was among those first delighted listeners who paused in their tasks to hear the immortal song at its birth a slave girl in whose soul were strange melodies of her own. Born of free people of color, she was bonded to the owner of this plantation, yet her soul was such as must be free. Faithful in her work, respectful and obedient, she was yet a dangerous character among slaves, being too spirited. Hence her master ordered her to leave, fearing she would demoralize discipline in the quarters. She demanded to be taken away as she had been brought--in a wagon; and it was so done. It seems that one-half of her blood was African and the other half was divided between Indian and English, though it is impossible to be sure of the exact proportion. An account of her in those days by one who knew her reveals her as one of nature’s poets--a Phillis Wheatley of the wash-tubs. “She was very fervent in her religious devotions”--so runs this account--“and a very hard worker. She would sometimes wash nearly all night and then have periods of prayer and exaltation. Then again during the day she would draw from her bosom a favorite book and pause to read over the wash-tub. She had a strong dramatic instinct and would frequently make up little plays of her own and represent each character vividly.” Of such mothers are seers and poets born. And so in this instance it proved to be.

At the age of twenty, while yet a slave, she was married, under the common law--though marriage it was not called--to a Scotch-Irishman, a prominent citizen of Louisville, her employer at the time, who was distinguished by a notably handsome physique and a great fondness for books. Of this union was born, at Bardstown, a son, Joseph, so named for the dreamer of biblical story.

The vision-seeing slave mother, her mind running on the bondage of her people, named her son Joseph in the hope of his becoming great in the service of his people, like the Hebrew Joseph. She lived to see her hope fulfilled. The boy’s earliest education was in song and story invented and sung or told by his mother. He got a few terms of school, reaching the third grade. At ten years of age he went to work in a brickyard of Louisville to help support his mother. Even there the faculty that afterwards distinguished him appears in action, to his relief in time of trouble. Bigger boys, white and black, working in the same yard, hazed and harried him. Fighting to victory was out of the question, against such odds. Brains won where brawn was wanting. He observed that the men at their noon rest-hour, the time of his distress, told stories and laughed. He couldn’t join them, but he tried story-telling in the boy group. It worked. The men, hearing the laughter, came over and joined them. The persecuted boy became the entertainer of both groups. He had won mastery by wit, the proudest mastery in the world.

Then, until he was twenty-two years of age, he was a teamster on the levee. At this time the desire for an education mastered him and he entered a night school--the primary grade. Hard toil and the struggle to get on had not killed his soul but had wiped out his acquisitions of book-knowledge. In two terms he was qualified to teach. He is now the principal of the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor High School in Louisville, the author of several books, a maker of songs and teller of stories, and a man upright in conduct and wise in counsel.

It was at Bardstown, February 2, 1861, that Joseph Seamon Cotter was born. Let Bardstown be put on the literary map of America, not because Stephen Collins Foster wrote “My Old Kentucky Home” there, but because one was born there the latchet of whose poetic shoes he was not worthy to unloose. “A poet, a bard, to be born in Bardstown--how odd, and how appropriate!” one exclaims. And _bard_ seems exactly the right appellation for this song-maker and story-man. But it is not altogether so. In character bardlike, but not in appearance. Bards have long, unkempt, white hair, which mingles with beards that rest on their bosoms. Cotter’s square-cut chin is clean-shaven, and his large brain-dome shows like a harvest moon. But he makes poems and invents and discovers stories, and, bard-like, recites or relates them to whatever audience may call for them--in schools, in churches, at firesides. Minus the hairy habiliments he is a bard.

Some of Cotter’s stories come out of Africa and are “different,” as the word goes. Some are “current among the colored folks of Louisville.” These, too, are different. Some are tragedies and some are comedies and some are tragi-comedies of everyday life among the Negroes. I will give one entire tale here, selecting this particular one because of its brevity, not its pre-eminence:

THE BOY AND THE IDEAL

Once upon a time a Mule, a Hog, a Snake, and a Boy met. Said the Mule: “I eat and labor that I may grow strong in the heels. It is fine to have heels so gifted. My heels make people cultivate distance.”

Said the Hog: “I eat and labor that I may grow strong in the snout. It is fine to have a fine snout. I keep people watching for my snout.”

“No exchanging heels for snouts,” broke in the Mule.

“No,” answered the Hog; “snouts are naturally above heels.”

Said the Snake: “I eat to live, and live to cultivate my sting. The way people shun me shows my greatness. Beget stings, comrades, and stings will beget glory.”

Said the Boy: “There is a star in my life like unto a star in the sky. I eat and labor that I may think aright and feel aright. These rounds will conduct me to my star. Oh, inviting star!”

“I am not so certain of that,” said the Mule. “I have noticed your kind and ever see some of myself in them. Your star is in the distance.”

The Boy answered by smelling a flower and listening to the song of a bird. The Mule looked at him and said: “He is all tenderness and care. The true and the beautiful have robbed me of a kinsman. His star is near.”

Said the Boy: “I approach my star.”

“I am not so certain of that,” interrupted the Hog. “I have noticed your kind and I ever see some of myself in them. Your star is a delusion.”

The Boy answered by painting the flower and setting the notes of the bird’s song to music.

The Hog looked at the boy and said: “His soul is attuned by nature. The meddler in him is slain.”

“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.

Around him lies the ripened grain
From every land and every age;
The weakest thresher should attain
Unto the wisdom of the sage.

Ambitious youth, this is the wealth
The ages have bequeathed to thee.
Thou canst not take thy share by stealth
Nor by mere ingenuity.

Thy better self must spur thee on
To win what time has made thy own;
No hand but labor’s yet has drawn
The sweets that labor’s hand has sown.

In verse presuming to be lyrical we hearken for the lyrical cry. That cry is in his lines, melodiously uttered, and poignant. For example:

The flowers take the tears
Of the weeping night
And give them to the sun
For the day’s delight.

My passion takes the joys
Of the laughing day
And melts them into tears
For my heart’s decay.

The sweet sadness of those stanzas lingers with one. A stanza from a poem entitled “The Nation’s Neglected Child” may help us to their secret:

I am not thy pampered steed,
I am not thy welcome dog;
I am of a lower breed
Even than thy Berkshire hog;
I am thy neglected child--
Make me grow, but keep me wild.

In many of Cotter’s verses there is a sonorous flow which is evidence of poetic power made creative by passion. Didacticism and philosophy do not destroy the lyrical quality. In _The Book’s Creed_ this teacher-poet makes an appeal to his generation to be as much alive and as creative as the creed makers of other days were. The slaves of the letter, the mummers of mere formulas, he thus addresses:

You are dead to all the Then,
You are dead to all the Now,
If you hold that former men
Wore the garland for your brow.

Time and tide were theirs to brave,
Time and tide are yours to stem.
Bow not o’er their open grave
Till you drop your diadem.

Honor all who strove and wrought,
Even to their tears and groans;
But slay not your honest thought
Through your reverence for their bones.

Cotter is a wizard at rhyming. His “Sequel to the Pied Piper of Hamelin” surpasses the original--Browning’s--in technique--that is, in rushing rhythms and ingenious rhymes. It is an incredible success, with no hint of a tour-de-force performance. Its content, too, is worthy of the metrical achievement. I will lay the proof before the competent reader in an extract or two from this remarkable accomplishment:

The last sweet notes the piper blew
Were heard by the people far and wide;
And one by one and two by two
They flocked to the mountain-side.

Some came, of course, intensely sad,
And some came looking fiercely mad,
And some came singing solemn hymns,
And some came showing shapely limbs,
And some came bearing the tops of yews,
And some came wearing wooden shoes,
And some came saying what they would do,
And some came praying (and loudly too),
And all for what? Can you not infer?
A-searching and lurching for the Pied Piper,
And the boys and girls he had taken away.
And all were ready now to pay
Any amount that he should say.

So begins the _Sequel_. Another passage, near the end, will indicate the trend of the story:

The years passed by, as years will do,
When trouble is the master,
And always strives to bring to view
A new and worse disaster;
And sorrow, like a sorcerer,
Spread out her melancholy pall,
So that its folds enveloped all,
And each became her worshipper.
And not a single child was born
Through all the years thereafter;
If words sprang from the lips of scorn
None came from those of laughter.

Finally, the inhabitants of Hamelin are passing through death’s portal, and when all had departed:

--a message went to Rat-land

* * * * *

And lo! a race of rats was at hand

* * * * *

They swarmed into the highest towers,
And loitered in the fairest bowers,
And sat down where the mayor sat,
And also in his Sunday hat;
And gnawed revengefully thereat.
With rats for mayor and rats for people,
With rats in the cellar and rats in the steeple,
With rats without and rats within,
Stood poor, deserted Hamelin.

Like Dunbar, Cotter is a satirist of his people--or certain types of his people--a gentle, humorous, affectionate satirist. His medium for satire is dialect, inevitably. Sententious wisdom, irradiated with humor, appears in these pieces in homely garb. In standard English, without satire or humor that wisdom thus appears:

What deeds have sprung from plow and pick!
What bank-rolls from tomatoes!
No dainty crop of rhetoric
Can match one of potatoes.

The gospel of work has been set forth by our poet in a four-act poetic drama entitled _Caleb, the Degenerate_. All the characters are Negroes. The form is blank verse--blank verse of a very high order, too. The language, like Shakespeare’s--though Browning rather than Shakespeare is suggested--is always that of a poet. The wisdom is that of a man who has observed closely and pondered deeply. Idealistic, philosophical, poetical--such it is. It bears witness to no ordinary dramatic ability.

“Best bard, because the wisest,” says our Israfel. Verily. “Sage” you may call this man as well as “bard.” The proof is in poems and tales, apologues and apothegms. Joseph Seamon Cotter is now sixty years of age. Yet the best of him, according to good omens, is yet to be given forth, in song, story, precept, and drama. His nature is opulent--the cultivation began late and the harvest grows richer.

The chief event of his life, I doubt not, remains to be mentioned--a very sad one. This was the untimely death of his poet-son, Joseph S. Cotter, Jr. Born of this sorrow was the following lyric:

Oh, my way and thy way,
And life’s joy and wonder,
And thy day and my day
Are cloven asunder.

Oh, my trust and thy trust,
And fair April weather,
And thy dust and my dust
Shall mingle together.

_The Son_

Dead at the age of twenty-three years, Joseph S. Cotter, Jr., left behind a thin volume of lyrics, entitled _The Band of Gideon_, and about twenty sonnets of an unfinished sequence, and a little book of one-act plays. I will presently place the remarkable title-poem of his book of lyrics before the reader, but first I will give two minor pieces, without comment:

RAIN MUSIC

On the dusty earth-drum
Beats the falling rain;
Now a whispered murmur,
Now a louder strain.

Slender silvery drumsticks,
On the ancient drum,
Beat the mellow music,
Bidding life to come.

Chords of earth awakened,
Notes of greening spring,
Rise and fall triumphant
Over everything.

Slender silvery drumsticks
Beat the long tattoo--
God the Great Musician
Calling life anew.

COMPENSATION

I plucked a rose from out a bower fair,
That overhung my garden seat;
And wondered I if, e’er before, bloomed there
A rose so sweet.

Enwrapt in beauty I scarce felt the thorn
That pricked me as I pulled the bud;
Till I beheld the rose, that summer morn,
Stained with my blood.

I sang a song that thrilled the evening air,
With beauty somewhat kin to love,
And all men knew that lyric song so rare
Came from above.

And men rejoiced to hear the golden strain;
But no man knew the price I paid,
Nor cared that out of my soul’s deathless pain
The song was made.

The lyrical faculty is evinced by such poems. But other singers of our day might have produced them--singers of the white race. Not so, I think, of “The Band of Gideon.” Upon that poem is the stamp, not of genius only, but of Negro genius. In it is re-incarnated, by a cultured, creative mind, the very spirit of the old plantation songs and sermons. The reader who has in his possession that background will respond to the unique and powerful appeal of this poem.

THE BAND OF GIDEON

The band of Gideon roam the sky,
The howling wind is their war-cry,
The thunder’s roll is their trumpet’s peal
And the lightning’s flash their vengeful steel.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
“The Sword of the Lord and Gideon.”

And men below rear temples high
And mock their God with reasons why,
And live in arrogance, sin, and shame,
And rape their souls for the world’s good name.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
“The Sword of the Lord and Gideon.”

The band of Gideon roam the sky
And view the earth with baleful eye;
In holy wrath they scourge the land
With earthquake, storm, and burning brand.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
“The Sword of the Lord and Gideon.”

The lightnings flash and the thunders roll,
And “Lord have mercy on my soul,”
Cry men as they fall on the stricken sod,
In agony searching for their God.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
“The Sword of the Lord and Gideon.”

And men repent and then forget
That heavenly wrath they ever met.
The band of Gideon yet will come
And strike their tongues of blasphemy dumb.
Each black cloud
Is a fiery steed.
And they cry aloud
With each strong deed,
“The Sword of the Lord and Gideon.”

The reader, I predict, will be drawn again and again to this mysterious poem. It will continue to haunt his imagination, and tease his thought. The stamp of the African mind is upon it. Closely allied, on the one hand by its august refrain to the Spirituals, on the other hand it touches the most refined and perfected art; such, for example, as Rossetti’s ballads or Vachel Lindsay’s cantatas. It can scarcely be wondered at that the people of his race should call this untimely dead singer their Negro Lycidas.

II. JAMES DAVID CORROTHERS

THE DREAM AND THE SONG

So oft our hearts, beloved lute,
In blossomy haunts of song are mute;
So long we pore, ’mid murmurings dull,
O’er loveliness unutterable;
So vain is all our passion strong!
The dream is lovelier than the song.

The rose thought, touched by words, doth turn
Wan ashes. Still, from memory’s urn,
The lingering blossoms tenderly
Refute our wilding minstrelsy.
Alas! we work but beauty’s wrong!
The dream is lovelier than the song.

Yearned Shelley o’er the golden flame?
Left Keats, for beauty’s lure, a name
But “writ in water”? Woe is me!
To grieve o’er floral faëry.
My Phasian doves are flown so long--
The dream is lovelier than the song!

Ah, though we build a bower of dawn,
The golden-winged bird is gone,
And morn may gild, through shimmering leaves,
Only the swallow-twittering eaves.
What art may house or gold prolong
A dream far lovelier than a song?

The lilting witchery, the unrest
Of wingèd dreams, is in our breast;
But ever dear Fulfilment’s eyes
Gaze otherward. The long-sought prize,
My lute, must to the gods belong.
The dream is lovelier than the song.

Cherokee-Indian, Scotch-Irish, French, and African blood in James David Corrothers, the author of this poem, makes his complexion, he supposed, “about that of the original man.” The reader has already had, at the beginning of the discussion of Dunbar, a sonnet from this poet. The sonnet, the above poem, and the others given here were published in _The Century Magazine_. Not unworthy of _The Century’s_ standards, the reader must say.

James David Corrothers was born in Michigan, July 2, 1869. His mother in giving him life surrendered her own. His father never cared for him. Sheltered for a few years by maternal relatives, he was out on the world in early boyhood, dependent on his own resources. Soon, because he was a Negro, he was a wanderer for work through several states. Often without money, friends, or food, he slept out of doors, sometimes in zero weather. At nineteen years of age, as before stated, he was shining shoes in a Chicago barber shop. There he was “discovered.”

Henry D. Lloyd was having his boots shined by young Corrothers when the two fell into book talk. The distinguished writer was astonished at the knowledge possessed by one engaged in such a menial occupation. Out of this circumstance, it seems, the Negro boot-black became a student in Northwestern University at Evanston, Illinois. By mowing lawns and doing whatever odd jobs he could find he worked his way for three years in the university. Then, by the kindness of Frances E. Willard, he had a year in Bennett College, Greensboro, North Carolina. Prior to his entrance at Northwestern there had been but one brief opportunity in his life for attending school. But the wandering youth, battling against the adverse fates, or, concretely stated, the disadvantage of being a Negro, had managed somehow to make great books his companions. Hence, he had entered what Carlyle calls “the true modern university.” Hence, his literary conversation with Mr. Lloyd.

Out of those early struggles, and perhaps also out of later bitter experiences, came such poems as the following:

AT THE CLOSED GATE OF JUSTICE

To be a Negro in a day like this
Demands forgiveness. Bruised with blow on blow,
Betrayed, like him whose woe-dimmed eyes gave bliss,
Still must one succor those who brought one low,
To be a Negro in a day like this.

To be a Negro in a day like this
Demands rare patience--patience that can wait
In utter darkness. ’Tis the path to miss,
And knock, unheeded, at an iron gate,
To be a Negro in a day like this.

To be a Negro in a day like this
Demands strange loyalty. We serve a flag
Which is to us white freedom’s emphasis.
Ah! one must love when truth and justice lag,
To be a Negro in a day like this.

To be a Negro in a day like this--
Alas! Lord God, what evil have we done?
Still shines the gate, all gold and amethyst
But I pass by, the glorious goal unwon,
“Merely a Negro”--in a day like _this_!

Even though his face be “red like Adam’s,” and even though his art be noble like that of the masters of song, yet had Mr. Corrothers, even in the republic of letters, felt the handicap of his complexion, as this sonnet bears witness:

THE NEGRO SINGER

O’er all my song the image of a face
Lieth, like shadow on the wild, sweet flowers.
The dream, the ecstasy that prompts my powers,
The golden lyre’s delights, bring little grace
To bless the singer of a lowly race.
Long hath this mocked me: aye, in marvelous hours,
When Hera’s gardens gleamed, or Cynthia’s bowers,
Or Hope’s red pylons, in their far, hushed place!
But I shall dig me deeper to the gold;
Fetch water, dripping, over desert miles
From clear Nyanzas and mysterious Niles
Of love; and sing, nor one kind act withhold.
So shall men know me, and remember long,
Nor my dark face dishonor any song.

Death has silenced the muse of this dark singer,
one of the best hitherto. That his endowment was
uncommon and that his achievement, as evinced by
these poems, is one of distinction, to use Mr.
Howells’s word, every reader equipped to judge
of poetry must admit.

III. A GROUP OF SINGING JOHNSONS

In all rosters the name Johnson claims liberal space. Five verse-smiths with that cognomen will be presented in this book, and there is a sixth. These many Johnsons are no further related to one another, so far as I know, than that they are all Adam’s offspring, and poets. Only three of them will be presented in this chapter: James Weldon Johnson, of Florida, author of _Fifty Years and Other Poems_ (1917); Charles Bertram Johnson, of Missouri, author of _Songs of My People_ (1918); Fenton Johnson, of Chicago, author of _A Little Dreaming_ (1914); _Unions of the Dusk_ (1915), and _Songs of the Soil_ (1916). The fourth and fifth are women, and will find a place in another group; the sixth is Adolphus Johnson, author of _The Silver Chord_, Philadelphia, 1915. The three mentioned above will be treated in the order in which they have been named.

_1. James Weldon Johnson_

Now of New York, but born in Florida and reared in the South, James Weldon Johnson is a man of various abilities, accomplishments, and activities. He was graduated with the degrees of A. B. and A. M. from Atlanta University and later studied for three years in Columbia University. First a school-principal, then a practitioner of the law, he followed at last the strongest propensity and turned author. His literary work includes light operas, for which his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, composed the music, and a novel entitled _The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man_. Having been United States consul in two Latin-American countries, he is a master of Spanish and has made translations of Spanish plays and poems. The English libretto of _Goyescas_ was made by him for the Metropolitan Opera Company in 1915. He is also one of the ablest editorial writers in the country. In the _Public Ledger’s_ contest of 1916 he won the third prize. His editorials are widely syndicated in the Negro weekly press. Poems of his have appeared in _The Century_, _The Crisis_, and _The Independent_.

Professor Brander Matthews in his Introduction to _Fifty Years and Other Poems_ speaks of “the superb and soaring stanzas” of the title-poem and describes it as “a poem sonorous in its diction, vigorous in its workmanship, elevated in its imagination, and sincere in its emotion.” Doubtless this will seem like the language of exaggeration. The sceptic, however, must withhold judgment until he has read the poem, too long for presentation here. Mr. Johnson’s poetical qualities can be represented in this place only by briefer though inferior productions. A poem of special significance, and characterized by the qualities noted by Professor Matthews in “Fifty Years,” is the following:

O SOUTHLAND!

O Southland! O Southland!
Have you not heard the call,
The trumpet blown, the word made known
To the nations, one and all?
The watchword, the hope-word,
Salvation’s present plan?
A gospel new, for all--for you:
Man shall be saved by man.

O Southland! O Southland!
Do you not hear to-day
The mighty beat of onward feet,
And know you not their way?
’Tis forward, ’tis upward,
On to the fair white arch
Of Freedom’s dome, and there is room
For each man who would march.

O Southland, fair Southland!
Then why do you still cling
To an idle age and a musty page,
To a dead and useless thing?
’Tis springtime! ’Tis work-time!
The world is young again!
And God’s above, and God is love,
And men are only men.

O Southland! my Southland!
O birthland! do not shirk
The toilsome task, nor respite ask,
But gird you for the work.
Remember, remember
That weakness stalks in pride;
That he is strong who helps along
The faint one at his side.

For pure lyric beauty and exquisite pathos, Wordsworthian in both respects, but no hint of imitation, the following stanzas may be set, without disadvantage to them, by the side of any in our literature:

The glory of the day was in her face,
The beauty of the night was in her eyes,
And over all her loveliness, the grace
Of Morning blushing in the early skies.

And in her voice, the calling of the dove;
Like music of a sweet, melodious part.
And in her smile, the breaking light of love;
And all the gentle virtues in her heart.

And now the glorious day, the beauteous night,
The birds that signal to their mates at dawn,
To my dull ears, to my tear-blinded sight
Are one with all the dead, since she is gone.

Yet one other poem of this fine singer’s I will give, selecting from not a few that press for the restricted space. The easy flow of the verse and the ready rhyme will be remarked--and that supreme quality of good lyric poetry, austere simplicity.

THE YOUNG WARRIOR

Mother, shed no mournful tears,
But gird me on my sword;
And give no utterance to thy fears,
But bless me with thy word.

The lines are drawn! The fight is on!
A cause is to be won!
Mother, look not so white and wan;
Give Godspeed to thy son.

Now let thine eyes my way pursue
Where’er my footsteps fare;
And when they lead beyond thy view,
Send after me a prayer.

But pray not to defend from harm,
Nor danger to dispel;
Pray, rather, that with steadfast arm
I fight the battle well.

Pray, mother of mine, that I always keep
My heart and purpose strong,
My sword unsullied and ready to leap
Unsheathed against the wrong.

Arduous labors in other fields than poetry threaten to silence Mr. Johnson’s muse, and that is to be regretted.

2. _Charles Bertram Johnson_

School-teacher, preacher, poet--this is Charles Bertram Johnson of Missouri. And in Missouri there is no voice more tuneful, no artistry in song any finer, than his. Nor in so bold an assertion am I forgetting the sweet voice and exquisite artistry of Sarah Teasdale. Mr. Johnson’s art is not unlike hers in all that makes hers most charming. Only there is not so much of his that attains to perfection of form. On pages 52 and 63 were given two of his quatrain poems. These were of his people. But a lyric poet should sing himself. That is of the essence of lyric poetry. In so singing, however, the poet reveals not only his individual life, but that of his race to the view of the world. Another quatrain poem, personal in form, may be accepted as of racial interpretation:

SOUL AND STAR

So oft from out the verge afar
The dear dreams throng and throng,
Sometimes I think my soul a star,
And life a pulséd song.