It is not, then, to editorials and speeches and sermons, nor to petitions, protests, and resolutions, but to poems that the wise will turn in order to learn the temper and permanent bent of mind of a people. Witness the recent history of Ireland. Her literary renascence preceded her effective political agitation. The political agitation which resulted in her independence was the work of poets. The real life of a people finds its only adequate record in song. All of a people’s history that is permanently or profoundly significant is distilled into poetry.
It is to the unknown poetry of a despised and rejected people that I call attention in these pages. One of this people’s poets sings:
We have fashioned laughter
Out of tears and pain,
But the moment after—
Pain and tears again.
Charles Bertram Johnson.
And when he so sings we know there is one race above all others which these words describe. Another sings:
I will suppose that fate is just,
I will suppose that grief is wise,
And I will tread what path I must
To enter Paradise.
Joseph S. Cotter, Sr.
And when he so sings we know out of what tribulations his resignation has been born. The resolution of despair cries out in the lines of another:
My life were lost if I should keep
A hope-forlorn and gloomy face,
And brood upon my ills, and weep,
And mourn the travail of my race.
Leslie Pinckney Hill.
Another singer, coming out of the Black Belt of the lower South, records the daily and life-long history of his people in these lines:
IT’S ALL THROUGH LIFE
A day of joy, a week of pain,
A sunny day, a week of rain;
A day of peace, a year of strife;
But cling to Him, it’s all through life.