Negro Poets and Their Poems

by Robert Thomas Kerlin

’Tis a scene so sad and lonely,
’Tis the site of ancient toil;
Where our fathers bore their burdens,
Where they sleep beneath the soil;
And the fields are waste and barren,
Where the sugar cane did grow,
Where they tilled the corn and cotton,
In the years of long ago;

And along the piney hillside,
Where the hound pursued the slave,
In the dreary years of bondage,
There he fills an humble grave.

THE OLD DESERTED CABIN

Dis ole deserted cabin
Remin’s me ob de past;
An’ when I gits ter t’inkin’,
De tears comes t’ick an’ fast.

I wunner whur’s A’nt Doshy,
I wunner whur’s Brur Jim;
I hyeahs no corn-songs ringin’,
I hyeahs no Gospel hymn.

Dis ole deserted cabin
Am tumblin’ in decay;
An’ all its ole-time dwellers
Hab gone de silent way.

Dey voices hushed in silence,
De cabin drear an’ lone;
An’ dey who used ter lib hyeah
Long sense is dead an’ gone.

J. Mord Allen’s poems and tales in dialect are worthy of distinction. They are executed in the true spirit of art. I should rank his book, elsewhere named, as one of the few best the Negro has contributed to literature. I will give here one specimen of his dialect verse:

A VICTIM OF MICROBES

NOTE.—Physicians are agreed that laziness is a microbe disease.