No less certain it is that many a reader will demand something more crude, more obscure, more mystical. Something, perhaps, at once ridiculous and wise—with big and strangely compounded words, ludicrously applied, yet striving at the expression of some peculiarly African idea. Of such verse I can produce no example. The nearest I can come to meeting such impossible demand is by submitting the following from William Edgar Bailey:
THE SLUMP
Mr. Self at the bat!
Well, we’re all at the bat—
For one thing or other,
For this or for that.
The ball may be hurled, in the form of this plea:
“Will you please help the poor?
God, have mercy on me!”
Mr. Self stops to think;
But the ball cuts the plate—
He’s aware that he slumped,
Grasps the bat,—but too late.
What you say, Mr. Ump?
Can it be? Yes, ’tis done!
“Well, I’ve said what I’ve said!”
Mr. Self,
Strike One!
Mr. Self’s face is grim.
’Tis the critical test—
For his heart, conscience-sick,
Heaves stern at his breast.
The Truth must be hurled, ’tis the law of the game;
If in life or in death,
If in falsehood or shame.
Mr. Self, strike the ball—
There’s a Tramp at your Gate!
Mr. Self still amazed—
And the ball cuts the plate.
Mr. Self murmured not;
The decision he knew,
“Well, you’ve done that before.”
Sighed the Ump.
Strike Two!
There’s the Beggar and Gate—
But his silver and gold,
Is amix with his blood;
A part of his soul.
The Nazarene stooped—as all Umpires will do,
With His eye on a line,
That his verdict be true—
Just a shift of the Truth,
Stern, the Nazarene tried,
But he tho’t of the Cross,
And the blood from His side.
“Your decision is false;
Oh, have mercy on me.”
But a voice from the sky,
Whispered low.
Strike three.
Of humorous verse there is very little produced by the Negro writers of these times. They take their vocation seriously. When their singing robes are on it is to the plaintive notes of the flute or the dolorous blasts of the trumpet they tune their songs.
These voices, and others like them, have but lately been lifted in song, they are still youthful voices, and they are but preluding the more perfect songs they are yet to sing. One voice that is now still, silenced lately in death, at the age of twenty-three years, has sung for them all what all feel:
THE MULATTO TO HIS CRITICS
Ashamed of my race?
And of what race am I?
I am many in one.
Through my veins there flows the blood
Of Red Man, Black Man, Briton, Celt, and Scot,
In warring clash and tumultuous riot.
I welcome all,
But love the blood of the kindly race
That swarths my skin, crinkles my hair,
And puts sweet music into my soul.
Joseph S. Cotter, Jr.
“Sweet music in the soul”—that is heaven’s kind gift to this people, music of sorrow and of faith; music, low and plaintive, of hope almost failing; music, clear and strong, born of vision triumphant; music, alas, sometimes marred by the strident notes of hatred and revenge. Verily, poets learn in suffering what they teach in song.