“I placed great Dante in exile,
And Byron had his turns;
Then Keats and Shelley smote the while,
And my immortal Burns!
But thee I’ll build a sacred shrine,
A store of all my ware;
By them I’ll teach thy soul to sing
‘A place in Harvard Square.’
“To some a store of mystic lore,
To some to shine a star:
The first I gave to Allan Poe,
The last to Paul Dunbar.
Since thou hast waited patient, long,
Now by my throne I swear
To give to thee my sweetest song
To sing in Harvard Square.”
And when she gave her parting kiss
And bade a long farewell,
I sat serene in perfect bliss
As she forsook my cell.
Upon the altar-fire she poured
Some incense very rare;
Its fragrance sweet my soul assured
I’d enter Harvard Square.
Reclining on my couch, I slept
A sleep sweet and profound;
O’er me the blessed angels kept
Their vigil close around.
With dawning’s smile, my fondest hope
Shone radiant and fair:
The Justice cut each chain and rope
’Tween me and Harvard Square!
Of all the Negro poets whose writings I have perused, Edward Smythe Jones is the most difficult to estimate with certainty. There is an eloquence and luxuriance of language and imagery in his stanzas which perplexes the critic and yet persuades him to repeated readings. The result, however, fails to become clear. If, with his copiousness, the reserve of disciplined art ever becomes his, and his critical faculty is trained to match his creative, then poetry of noteworthy merit may be expected from him. His deeply religious bent, his aspiration after the best things of the mind, his ambition to treat lofty themes, augur well for him.
Mr. Jones’s two best poems, The Sylvan Cabin: A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Abraham Lincoln and An Ode to Ethiopia: to the Aspiring Negro Youth, are too long for insertion here. I will give a shorter patriotic ode, not included in his book, but written, I believe, during the World War:
FLAG OF THE FREE
Flag of the free, our sable sires
First bore thee long ago
Into hot battles’ hell-lit fires,
Against the fiercest foe.
And when he shook his shaggy mien,
And made the death-knell ring,
Brave Attucks fell upon the Green,
Thy stripes first crimsoning.
Thy might and majesty we hurl,
Against the bolts of Mars;
And from thy ample folds unfurl
Thy field of flaming stars!
Fond hope to nations in distress,
Thy starry gleam shall give;
The stricken in the wilderness
Shall look to thee and live.
What matter if where Boreas roars,
Or where sweet Zephyr smiles?
What matter if where eagle soars,
Or in the sunlit isles?
Thy flowing crimson stripes shall wave
Above the bluish brine,
Emblazoned ensign of the brave,
And Liberty enshrine!