An hour of joy, a day of fears,
An hour of smiles, a day of tears;
An hour of gain, a day of strife,
Press on, press on, it’s all through life.
Waverley Turner Carmichael.
In the poetry which the Negro is producing to-day there is a challenge to the world. His race has been deeply stirred by recent events; its reaction has been mighty. The challenge, spoken by one, but for the race, the inarticulate millions as well as the cultured few, comes thus:
TO AMERICA
How would you have us—as we are,
Or sinking ’neath the load we bear?
Our eyes fixed forward on a star?
Or gazing empty at despair?
Rising or falling? Men or things?
With dragging pace, or footsteps fleet?
Strong, willing sinews in your wings?
Or tightening chains about your feet?
James Weldon Johnson.
With slight regard for smooth words another declares his grievances, that all may understand:
Yes, I am lynched. Is it that I
Must without judge or jury die?
Though innocent, am I accursed
To quench the mob’s blood-thirsty thirst?
Yes, I am mocked. Pray tell me why!
Did not my brothers freely die
For you, and your Democracy—
That each and all alike be free?
Raymond Garfield Dandridge.
So runs the dominant note of this poetry. But it would be unjust to the race producing it to convey the idea that this is the only note. The harp of Ethiopia has many strings and the brothers of Memnon are many. Sometimes the note is one of simple beauty, like that of a wild rose blossoming by the wayside. No reader could tell what race produced such a lyric as the one following, but any reader responsive to the beauty of art and to the truth of passion would assert its excellence:
I will hide my soul and its mighty love
In the bosom of this rose,
And its dispensing breath will take
My love wherever it goes.
And perhaps she’ll pluck this very rose,
And, quick as blushes start,
Will breathe my hidden secret in
Her unsuspecting heart.
George Marion McClellan.
In a Negro magazine one may chance upon a sonnet that the best poet of our times might have signed and feared no loss to his reputation, nor would there be any mark of race in its lines. To candid judgment I submit the following, from Mrs. Alice Dunbar-Nelson: