A different kind of merit, the merit of intense reprobation of cruel arrogancy in the one race and of treacherous cowardice in the other, is exemplified in The Edict. Triumphant faith, which is the Negro’s peculiar heritage, asserts itself in such a way, in the final stanza, as to lift the poem to the heights of moral feeling.
THE EDICT
All these must die before the Morning break:
They who at God an angry finger shake,
Declaring that because He made them White,
Their race should rule the world by sacred right.
They who deny a common Brotherhood—
Who cry aloud, and think no Blackman good—
The blood-cursed mob always eager to take
The rope in hand or light the flaming stake,
Jeering the wretch while he in death pain quakes—
All these must die before the Morning breaks.
All these must die before the Morning breaks:
The Blackmen, faithless, whose loud laughter wakes
Harsh echoes in the most unbiased places.
They who choose vice, and scorn the gentle graces—
Who by their manners breed contemptuous hate,
Suggesting jim-crow laws from state to state—
They who think on earth they may not find
An ideal man nor woman of their kind.
But from some other Race that ideal take—
All these must die before the Morning break!
We know, O Lord, that there will come a time,
When o’er the World will dawn the Age Sublime,
When Truth shall call to all mankind to stand
Before Thy throne as Brothers, hand in hand,
Be not displeased with him who this song makes—
All these must die before the Morning breaks!
If lyric poetry be self-revealment—and such it is, or it is nothing—we can learn from the following poem how deep a sorrow at some time in his life this poet must have experienced:
HOPELESSNESS
Had you called from the fire, or from the sea,
From ’mid the roaring flames, or dark’ning wave,
With eagerness I then had come to thee,
To perish with thee if I could not save.
But now helpless I sit and watch you die,
There is no power can save, the doctors say;
I lift my eyes unto the silent sky,
And wonder why it is that mortals pray.
The title-poem of the booklet, Negro Soldiers, is no doubt Jamison’s masterpiece. It is worthy of the universal admiration it has won from those who know it.