'Tis hard to judge if hatred of one's race,
By those who deem themselves superior-born,
Be worse than that quiescence in disgrace,
Which only merits—and should only—scorn!
Oh! let me see the Negro, night and morn,
Pressing and fighting in, for place and power!
If he a proud escutcheon would adorn,
All earth is place—all time th' auspicious hour,
While heaven leans forth to see, oh! can he quail or cower?
Ah! I abhor his protest and complaint!
His pious looks and patience I despise!
He can't evade the test, disguised as saint,
The manly voice of freedom bids him rise,
And shake himself before Philistine eyes!
And, like a lion roused, no sooner than
A foe dare come, play all his energies,
And court the fray with fury if he can!
For hell itself respects a fearless manly man.
In 1890 Whitman brought out an edition of Not a Man and Yet a Man and The Rape of Florida, adding to these a collection of miscellaneous poems, Drifted Leaves, and in 1901 he published An Idyl of the South, an epic poem in two parts. It is to be regretted that he did not have the training that comes from the best university education. He had the taste and the talent to benefit from such culture in the greatest degree.
This brief review of the work of three earnest members of the race prompts a few reflections on the whole art of poetry as this is cultivated by the Negro in America. If we may make any reasonable deduction from the work of the poets studied, if we may arrive at any conclusion from the work of Paul Laurence Dunbar and the younger writers of the day, we should say that the genius of the race is subjective and romantic rather than objective and classic. In poetry, least of all arts, does the Negro conceal his individuality. This is his great gift, but also in another way the spur to further achievement. The race should in course of time produce many brilliant lyric poets. Dunbar was a lyric poet; so was Pushkin. The drama and the epic obviously call for more extended information, a more objective point of view, and a broader basis in general culture than many members of the race have so far had the time or the talent or the inclination to give to them.
Again, has one ever asked himself why it is that so much of the poetry of the Negro fails to reach the ultimate standards of art? It certainly is not because of lack of imagination, for God has been generous in the imagery with which he has endowed the race. First of all, last of all, is it not the matter of technique? Many booklets of verse that have been issued show that the writers had not mastered even the ordinary fundamentals of English grammar. For one to think of rivalling Tennyson with his classical tradition when he can not make a clearcut English sentence is out of the question. Further, and this is the most important point, the work of those in question almost never exhibits imagination expressed in intense, condensed, vivid, and suggestive phrase—such phrasing, for instance, as one will find in "The Eve of St. Agnes," which I am not alone in considering the most lavishly brilliant and successful brief effort in poetry in the language. To all of this might be added a refining of taste, something all too frequently lacking and something that can come only from the most arduous and diligent culture. When we further secure such things as these the race may indeed possess not only a Horton, a Harper, or a Whitman, but a Tennyson, a Keats, and even a Shakespeare.
Benjamin Brawley
Footnotes:
[477] This paper was read at the biennial meeting of the Association held in Washington, D. C., on August 29, 1917.