And left the palace of the King,
Proud of her spotless name—
A woman who could bend to grief
But would not bow to shame.
Those last stanzas are quite as noble as any that one may find in the poets whom I named as setting the American fashion in the era of Mrs. Harper. The poems of this gentle, sweet-spirited Negro woman deserve a better fate than has overtaken them.
5. James Madison Bell and Albery A. Whitman
Although this is not a history of American Negro poetry, yet a brief notice must be given at this point to two other writers too important to be omitted even from a swift survey like the present one. They are J. Madison Bell and Albery A. Whitman.
James Madison Bell
Bell, anti-slavery orator and friend of John Brown’s, was a prolific writer of eloquent verse. His original endowments were considerable. Denied an education in boyhood, he learned a trade and in manhood at night-schools gained access to the wisdom of books. He became a master of expression both with tongue and pen. His long period of productivity covers the history of his people from the decade before Emancipation till the death of Dunbar. Bell’s themes are lofty and he writes with fervid eloquence. There is something of Byronic power in the roll of his verse. An extract from The Progress of Liberty will be representative, though an extract cannot show either the maintenance of power or the abundance of resources:
O Liberty, what charm so great!
One radiant smile, one look of thine
Can change the drooping bondsman’s fate,
And light his brow with hope divine.
His manhood, wrapped in rayless gloom,
At thy approach throws off its pall,
And rising up, as from the tomb,
Stands forth defiant of the thrall.
No tyrant’s power can crush the soul
Illumed by thine inspiring ray;
The fiendishness of base control
Flies thy approach as night from day.