The lessons of stern yesterdays
That stir your blood and poise your brain
Are etching out the simple ways
By which you must attain.
An echo here, a memory there,
An act that links itself with truth;
A vision that makes troubles air
And toils the joy of youth.
These be your food, your drink, your rest,
These be your moods of drudgeful ease,
For these be nature’s spur and test
And heaven’s fair decrees.
My little one of ebon hue,
My little one with fluffy hair,
Go train your head and hands to do,
Your head and heart to dare.
Joseph S. Cotter, Sr.
THE MOTHER
The mother soothes her mantled child
With plaintive melody, and wild;
A deep compassion brims her eye
And stills upon her lips the sigh.
Her thoughts are leaping down the years,
O’er branding bars, through seething tears:
Her heart is sandaling his feet
Adown the world’s corroding street.
Then, with a start, she dons a smile,
His tender yearnings to beguile;
And only God will ever know
The wordless measure of her woe.
Georgia Douglas Johnson.
The foregoing poems are generic in character, the following, specific. And yet there is much in these also that is typical and universal:
TO A NEGRO MOTHER