There died in Fort McHenry hospital, February, 2, 1921, a soldier-poet of the Negro race, who had been called “the poet laureate of the New Negro,” his name Lucian B. Watkins. He deserved the title, whatever may be the exact definition of “the New Negro.” For in his lyrics, of many forms, racial consciousness reached a degree of intensity to which only a disciplined sense of art set a limit.—He was born in a cabin at Chesterfield, Virginia, struggled in the usual way for the rudiments of book-knowledge, became a teacher, then a soldier. His health was wrecked in the World War. He died before his powers were matured.—Short and simple are the annals of the poet. Before one of his intenser race poems I shall give his last lyric cry, uttered but a few days before his lingering death:
Lucian B. Watkins
My fallen star has spent its light
And left but memory to me;
My day of dream has kissed the night
Farewell, its sun no more I see;
My summer bloomed for winter’s frost:
Alas, I’ve lived and loved and lost!
What matters it to-day should earth
Lay on my head a gold-bright crown
Lit with the gems of royal worth
Befitting well a king’s renown?—
My lonely soul is trouble-tossed,
For I have lived and loved and lost.
Great God! I dare not question Thee—
Thy way eternally is just;
This seeming mystery to me
Will be revealed, if I but trust;
Ah, Thou alone dost know the cost
When one has lived and loved and lost.
The following sonnet, entitled “The New Negro,” will serve to represent much of Watkins’s verse:
He thinks in black. His God is but the same
John saw—with hair “like wool” and eyes “as fire”—
Who makes the visions for which men aspire.
His kin is Jesus and the Christ who came
Humbly to earth and wrought His hallowed aim
’Midst human scorn. Pure is his heart’s desire;
His life’s religion lifts; his faith leads higher.
Love is his Church, and Union is its name.
Lo, he has learned his own immortal rôle
In this momentous drama of the hour;
Has read aright the heavens’ Scriptural scroll
’Bove ancient wrong—long boasting in its tower.
Ah, he has sensed the truth. Deep in his soul
He feels the manly majesty of power.