II. Leland Milton Fisher
Another sad story, more frequently repeated in the lives of the writers represented in this book, is that of Leland Milton Fisher. First I shall give one of his poems, as passionately sweet a lyric as can be found in American literature:
FOR YOU, SWEETHEART
For you, sweetheart, I’d have your skies
As bright as are your own bright eyes,
And all your day-dreams warm and fair
As is the sunshine in your hair.
The Fates to you should be as kind
As are the thoughts in your pure mind,
And every bird I’d have impart
Its sweetest song to you, sweetheart.
For you, sweetheart, I’d have each dart
Sorrow fashions for your tender heart,
Thrust in my own thrice happy breast,
That yours might have unbroken rest.
If you should fall asleep and lie
So very still and quiet that I
Would know your soul had slipped away
From your divinely molded clay,
Then, looking in your fair, sweet face
I’d pray to God: “In thy good grace,
O, Father, let me sleep, nor wake
Again on earth, for her dear sake.”
Born in Humbolt, Tennessee, in 1875, Fisher died of tuberculosis, ere yet thirty years of age, leaving behind an unpublished volume of poems.
III. W. Clarence Jordan
In another chapter I have written of a poet whose birthplace was Bardstown, Kentucky. W. Clarence Jordan, a Negro schoolmaster of Bardstown, now dead, wrote the following lines in answer to the questions, so frequently asked in derision, which stands as its title:
WHAT IS THE NEGRO DOING?