“Eeny meeny miny mo.”
Ah, how the sad-sweet Long Ago
Enyouths us, as by magic spell,
With that old rhyme. You know it well;
For time was, once, when e’en your eyes
Saw Heaven plainly, in the skies.
Past twilight, when a brave moon glowed
Just o’er the treetops, and the road
Was full of romping children—say,
What was the game we used to play?
Yes! Hide-and-seek. And at the base,
Who first must go and hide his face?
Remember—standing in a row—
“Eeny meeny miny mo”?
“Eeny meeny miny mo.”
How fare we children here below?
Our moon is far from treetops now,
And Heaven isn’t up, somehow.
No more for sport play we “I spy”;
Our “laying low” and “peeping high”.
Are now with consequences fraught;
There’s black disgrace in being caught.
But what’s to pay the pains we take?
Let’s play the game for its own sake,
And, ere ’tis time to homeward flit,
Let’s get some pleasure out of it.
For death will soon count down the row,
“Eeny meeny miny mo.”
Though of the elder day yet Allen is, like Dunbar, a herald of the generation that is now articulate. In this rôle of herald to a more self-assertive generation, a more aspiring and race-conscious one, he speaks with immense significance to us in this first poem of his book, which, as being prophetic of much we now see in the colored folk of America I permit to close this summary review of earlier Negro poetry:
THE PSALM OF THE UPLIFT
Still comes the Perfect Thing to man
As came the olden gods, in dreams;
And then the man—made artist—knows
How real is the thing which seems.
Then, tongue or brush or magic pen
May win the world to loud acclaim,
But he who wrought knows in his soul
That, like as tinsel is to gold,
His work is, to his aim.
It’s there ahead to him—and you
And me. I swear it isn’t far;
Else, black Despair would cut us down
In the land of hateful Things Which Are.
But, just beyond our finger-tips,
Things As They Should Be shame the weak,
And hold the aching muscles tense
Through th’ next moment of suspense
Which triumph is to break.
And shall we strive? The years to come,
Till sunset of eternity,
Are given to the fairest god,
The God of Things As They Should Be.
The ending? Nay, ’tis ours to do
And dare and bear and not to flinch;
To enter where is no retreat;
To win one stride from sheer defeat;
To die—but gain an inch.
CHAPTER II
THE PRESENT RENAISSANCE OF THE NEGRO
I. A Glance at the Field
Many are the forms of expression that the life of a developing people or group finds for itself—business and wealth, education and culture, political and social unrest and agitation, literature and art. It can scarcely happen that any people or group has a vital significance for other peoples or groups, or any real potency, until it begins to express itself in poetry. When, however, a race or a portion of our common race begins to embody its aspirations, its grievances, its animating spirit in song the world may well take notice. That race or portion of our common race has within it an unreckoned potency of good and evil—evil if the good be thwarted.