My people laugh and sing
And dance to death—
None imagining
The heartbreak under breath.
Charles Bertram Johnson.
Nothing weighs more heavily upon the soul of this race to-day than this everywhere self-betraying crass ignorance, made the more grievous to endure by the vain boast accompanying it, that “I know the Negro better than he knows himself.” This poetry in every line of it is a convincing contradiction of this insulting arrogancy. Essential identity, that is the message of these poets.
This kinship of souls and essential oneness of human nature, which Shylock, speaking for a similarly oppressed and outrageously treated people, pressed home upon the Christian merchants of Venice, finds typical expression in the following lines:
We travel a common road, Brother,—
We walk and we talk much the same;
We breathe the same sweet air of heaven—
Strive alike for fortune and fame;
We laugh when our hearts fill with gladness,
We weep when we’re smothered in woe;
We strive, we endure, we seek wisdom;
We sin—and we reap what we sow.
Yes, all who would know it can see that
When everything’s put to the test,
In spite of our color and features,
The Negro’s the same as the rest.
Leon R. Harris.
It is to be expected that, notwithstanding the Anglo-Saxon culture of the producers of this poetry, the white reader will yet demand therein what he regards as the African traits. Perhaps it will be crude, artless, repetitious songs like the Spirituals. The quality of the Spirituals is indeed not wanting in some of the most noteworthy contemporary Negro verse. From Fenton Johnson’s three volumes of verse I could select many pieces that exhibit this quality united with disciplined art. For example, here is one:
I PLAYED ON DAVID’S HARP
(A Negro Spiritual)
Last night I played on David’s harp,
I played on little David’s harp
The gospel tunes of Israel;
And all the angels came to hear
Me play those gospel tunes,
As the Jordan rolled away.
The angels shouted all the night
Their “Glory, Hallelujah” shout;
Old Gabriel threw his trumpet down
To hear the songs of Israel,
On mighty David’s harp,
As the Jordan rolled away.
When death has closed my weary eyes
I’ll play again on David’s harp
The last great song in life’s brief book;
And all you children born of God
Can stop awhile and hear me play,
As the Jordan rolls away.