II.The Poetry of Art

O black and unknown bards of long ago,How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?How, in your darkness, did you come to knowThe power and beauty of the minstrel’s lyre?Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,Feeling the ancient faith of prophets riseWithin his dark-kept soul, burst into song?

So begins this noble tribute to the nameless natural poets whose hearts, touched as a harp by the Divine Spirit, gave forth “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” and “Nobody Knows de Trouble I See,” “Steal Away to Jesus,” and “Roll, Jordan, Roll.”

Great praise does indeed rightly belong to that black slave-folk who gave to the world this treasure of religious song. To the world, I say, for they belong as truly to the whole world as do the quaint and incomparable animal stories of Uncle Remus. Their appeal is to every human heart, but especially to the heart that has known great sorrow and which looks to God for help.

It is only of late their meaning has begun to dawn upon us—their tragic, heart-searching meaning. Who in hearing these Spirituals sung to-day by the heirs of their creators can doubt what they meant when they were wailed in the quarters or shouted in wild frenzy in the camp-meetings of the slaves? Even the broken, poverty-stricken English adds infinitely to the pathos:

I’m walking on borrowed land,This world ain’t none of my home.We’ll stand the storm, it won’t be long.Oh, walk together children,Don’t get weary.My heavenly home is bright and fair,Nor pain nor death can enter there.Oh, steal away and pray,I’m looking for my Jesus.Oh, freedom! oh, freedom! oh, freedom over me!An’ before I’d be a slave,I’ll be buried in my grave,And go home to my Lord an’ be free.

I’m walking on borrowed land,This world ain’t none of my home.

We’ll stand the storm, it won’t be long.

Oh, walk together children,Don’t get weary.

My heavenly home is bright and fair,Nor pain nor death can enter there.

Oh, steal away and pray,I’m looking for my Jesus.

Oh, freedom! oh, freedom! oh, freedom over me!An’ before I’d be a slave,I’ll be buried in my grave,And go home to my Lord an’ be free.

Not a word here but had two meanings for the slave, a worldly one and a spiritual one, and only one meaning, the spiritual one, for the master—who gladly saw this religious frenzy as an emotional safety-valve.

In certain aspects these Spirituals suggest the songs of Zion, the Psalms. Trouble is the mother of song, particularly of religious song. In trouble the soul cries out to God—“a very present help in time of trouble.” The Psalms and the Spirituals alike risede profundis. But in one respect the songs of the African slaves differ from the songs of Israel in captivity: there is no prayer for vengeance in the Spirituals, no vindictive spirit ever even suggested. We can but wonder now at this. For slavery at its best was degrading, cruel, and oppressive. Yet no imprecation, such as mars so many a beautiful Psalm, ever found its way into a plantation Spiritual. A convincing testimony this to that spirit in the African slave which Christ, by precept and example, sought to establish in His disciples. If the Negro in our present day is growing bitter toward the white race, it behooves us to inquire why it is so, in view of hisindisputable patience, meekness, and good-nature. We might find in our present régime a more intolerable cruelty than belonged even to slavery, if we investigated honestly. There is certainly a bitter and vindictive tone in much of the Afro-American verse now appearing in the colored press. For both races it augurs ill.

But I have not yet indicated the precise place of these Spirituals in the world’s treasury of song. They have a close kinship with the Psalms but a yet closer one with the chanted prayers of the primitive Christians, the Christians when they were the outcasts of the Roman Empire when to be a Christian was to be a martyr. In secret places, in catacombs, they sent up their triumphant though sorrowful songs, they chanted their litanies

“—that cameLike the volcano’s tongue of flameUp from the burning core below—The canticles of love and woe.”

So indeed came the Spirituals of the African slave. These songs might in truth, to use a figure of the old poets, be called the melodious tears of those who wailed them. An African proverb says, “We weep in our hearts like the tortoise.” In their hearts—so wept the slaves, silently save for these mournful cries in melody. Without means of defense, save a nature armored with faith, when assailed, insulted, oppressed, they could but imitate the tortoise when he shuts himself up in his

InspirationBy Meta Warrick Fuller

Inspiration

By Meta Warrick Fuller

shell and patiently takes the blows that fall. The world knew not then, nor fully knows now—partly because of African buoyancy, pliability, and optimism—what tears they wept. These Spirituals are the golden vials spoken of in Holy Writ, “full of odors, which are the prayers of saints”—an everlasting memorial before the throne of God. Other vials there are, different from these, and they, too, are at God’s right hand.

A Negro sculptor, Mrs. Meta Warrick Fuller, not knowing of this proverb about the tortoise which has only recently been brought from Africa, but simply interpreting Negro life in America, has embodied the very idea of the African saying in bronze. Under the title “Secret Sorrow” a man is represented as eating his own heart.

The interpretation in art of the Spirituals, or a poetry of art developed along the lines and in the spirit of those songs, is something we may expect the black singers of no distant day to produce. Already we have many a poem that offers striking reminiscences of them.

But other songs the Negro has which are more noteworthy from the point of view of art than the Spirituals: songs that are richer in artistic effects, more elaborate in form, more varied and copious in expression. These are the Negro’s secular songs and rhymes, his dance, play, and love-making songs, his gnomic and nurseryrhymes.[1]It is not exaggeration to say that in rhythmic and melodic effects they surpass any other body of folk-verse whatsoever. In wit, wisdom, and quaint turns of humor no other folk-rhymes equal them. Prolific, too, in such productions the race seems to have been, since so many at this late day were to be found.

It comes not within the scope of this anthology to include any of these folk-rhymes of the elder day, but a few specimens seem necessary to indicate to the young Negro who would be a poet his rich heritage of song and to the white reader what essentially poetic traits the Negro has by nature. It was “black and unknown bards,” slaves, too, who sang or said these rhymes:

Oh laugh an’ sing an’ don’t git tired.We’s all gwine home, some Mond’y,To de honey pond an’ fritter trees;An’ ev’ry day’ll be Sund’y.

Pride, too, and a sense of values had the Negro, bond or free:

My name’s Ran, I wuks in de san’;But I’d druther be a Nigger dan a po’ white man.Gwinter hitch my oxes side by side,An’ take my gal fer a big fine ride.

My name’s Ran, I wuks in de san’;But I’d druther be a Nigger dan a po’ white man.

Gwinter hitch my oxes side by side,An’ take my gal fer a big fine ride.

After a description of anticipated pleasures anda comic interlude in dialogue, the ballad from which these two couplets are taken concludes with that varied repetition of the first stanza which we find so effective in the poems of art:

I’d druther be a Nigger, an’ plow ole Beck,Dan a white Hill Billy wid his long red neck.

Song or rhyme was, as ever, heart’s ease to the Negro in every trouble. Here are two rhymes that “pack up” and put away two common troubles:

She writ me a letterAs long as my eye.An’ she say in dat letter:“My Honey!—Good-by!”

Dem whitefolks say dat money talk.If it talk lak dey tell,Den ev’ry time it come to Sam,It up an’ say: “Farewell!”

Going to the nursery—it was the one room of the log cabin, or the great out-of-doors—we find the old-time Negro’s head filled with aMother Goosemore enchanting than any printed and pictured one in the “great house” of the white child:

W’en de big owl whoops,An’ de screech owl screeks,An’ de win’ makes a howlin’ sound;You liddle woolly headsHad better kiver up,Caze de “hants” is comin’ ’round.A, B, C,Doubled down D;I’se so lazy you cain’t see me.A, B, C,Doubled down D;Lazy Chilluns gits hick’ry tea.****Buck an’ Berry run a race,Buck fall down an’ skin his face.Buck an’ Berry in a stall;Buck, he try to eat it all.Buck, he e’t too much, you see.So he died wid choleree.

W’en de big owl whoops,An’ de screech owl screeks,An’ de win’ makes a howlin’ sound;You liddle woolly headsHad better kiver up,Caze de “hants” is comin’ ’round.

A, B, C,Doubled down D;I’se so lazy you cain’t see me.

A, B, C,Doubled down D;Lazy Chilluns gits hick’ry tea.****Buck an’ Berry run a race,Buck fall down an’ skin his face.

Buck an’ Berry in a stall;Buck, he try to eat it all.

Buck, he e’t too much, you see.So he died wid choleree.

But it is in the dance songs that rhythm in its perfection makes itself felt and that repetends are employed with effects which another Poe or Lanier might appropriate for supreme art. A lively scene and gay frolicsome movements are conjured up by the following dance songs:

CHICKEN IN THE BREAD TRAY

“Auntie, will yo’ dog bite?”—“No, Chile! No!”Chicken in de bread trayA makin’ up dough.“Auntie, will yo’ broom hit?”—“Yes, Chile!” Pop!Chicken in de bread tray;“Flop! Flop! Flop!”“Auntie, will yo’ oven bake?”—“Yes. Jes fry!”—“What’s dat chicken good fer?”—“Pie! Pie! Pie!”“Auntie, is yo’ pie good?”—“Good as you could ’spec’.”Chicken in de bread tray;“Peck! Peck! Peck!”

“Auntie, will yo’ dog bite?”—“No, Chile! No!”Chicken in de bread trayA makin’ up dough.

“Auntie, will yo’ broom hit?”—“Yes, Chile!” Pop!Chicken in de bread tray;“Flop! Flop! Flop!”

“Auntie, will yo’ oven bake?”—“Yes. Jes fry!”—“What’s dat chicken good fer?”—“Pie! Pie! Pie!”

“Auntie, is yo’ pie good?”—“Good as you could ’spec’.”Chicken in de bread tray;“Peck! Peck! Peck!”

Dancers

JUBA

Juba dis, an’ Juba dat,Juba skin dat Yaller Cat. Juba! Juba!Juba jump an’ Juba sing.Juba cut dat Pigeon’s Wing. Juba! Juba!Juba, kick off Juba’s shoe.Juba, dance dat Jubal Jew. Juba! Juba!Juba, whirl dat foot about.Juba, blow dat candle out. Juba! Juba!Juba circle, Raise de Latch.Juba do dat Long Dog Scratch. Juba! Juba!

Juba dis, an’ Juba dat,Juba skin dat Yaller Cat. Juba! Juba!

Juba jump an’ Juba sing.Juba cut dat Pigeon’s Wing. Juba! Juba!

Juba, kick off Juba’s shoe.Juba, dance dat Jubal Jew. Juba! Juba!

Juba, whirl dat foot about.Juba, blow dat candle out. Juba! Juba!

Juba circle, Raise de Latch.Juba do dat Long Dog Scratch. Juba! Juba!

Out of the pastime group I take a rhyme that is typically full of character, delicious in its wit and proverbial lore:

FATTENING FROGS FOR SNAKES

You needn’ sen’ my gal hoss apples,You needn’ sen’ her ’lasses candy;She would keer fer de lak o’ you,Ef you’d sen’ her apple brandy.W’y don’t you git some common sense?Jes git a liddle! Oh fer land sakes!Quit yo’ foolin’, she hain’t studyin’ you!Youse jes fattenin’ frogs fer snakes!

You needn’ sen’ my gal hoss apples,You needn’ sen’ her ’lasses candy;She would keer fer de lak o’ you,Ef you’d sen’ her apple brandy.

W’y don’t you git some common sense?Jes git a liddle! Oh fer land sakes!Quit yo’ foolin’, she hain’t studyin’ you!Youse jes fattenin’ frogs fer snakes!

In the love songs one finds that mingling of pathos and humor so characteristic of the Negro. The one example I shall give lacks nothing of art—some unknown Dunbar, some black Bobbie Burns, must have composed it:

SHE HUGGED ME AND KISSED ME

I see’d her in de Springtime,I see’d her in de Fall,I see’d her in de Cotton patch,A cameing from de Ball.She hug me, an’ she kiss me,She wrung my han’ an’ cried.She said I wus de sweetes’ thingDat ever lived or died.She hug me an’ she kiss me.Oh Heaben! De touch o’ her han’!She said I wus de puttiest thingIn de shape o’ mortal man.I told her dat I love her,Dat my love wus bed-cord strong;Den I axed her w’en she’d have me,An’ she jes say, “Go long!”

I see’d her in de Springtime,I see’d her in de Fall,I see’d her in de Cotton patch,A cameing from de Ball.

She hug me, an’ she kiss me,She wrung my han’ an’ cried.She said I wus de sweetes’ thingDat ever lived or died.

She hug me an’ she kiss me.Oh Heaben! De touch o’ her han’!She said I wus de puttiest thingIn de shape o’ mortal man.

I told her dat I love her,Dat my love wus bed-cord strong;Den I axed her w’en she’d have me,An’ she jes say, “Go long!”

In a very striking way these folk-songs of the plantation suggest the old English folk-songs of unknown authorship and origin—the ancient traditional ballads, long despised and neglected, but ever living on and loved in the hearts of the people. This unstudied poetry of the people, the unlettered common folk, had supreme virtues, the elemental and universal virtues of simplicity, sincerity, veracity. It had the power, in an artificial age, to bring poetry back to reality, to genuine emotion, to effectiveness, to the common interests of mankind. Simple and crude as it was it had a merit unknown to the polished verse of the schools. Potential Negro poets might do well to ponder this fact of literary history. There is nothing more precious in English literature than this crude old poetry of the people.

There is a book of rhymes which, every Christmas season, is the favorite gift, the most gladly received, of all that Santa Claus brings. Nor so at Christmas only; it is a perennial pleasure, a boon to all children, young and old in years. This book isMother Goose’s Melodies. How many “immortal” epics of learned poets it has outlived! How many dainty volumes of polished lyrics has this humble book of “rhymes” seen vanish to the dusty realms of dark oblivion! In every home it has a place and is cherished. Its contents are better known and more loved than the contents of any other book. Untutored, nameless poets, nature-inspired, gave this priceless boon to all generations of children, and to all sorts and conditions—an immortal book. As a life-long teacher and student of poetry, I venture, with no fear, the assertion that from no book of verse in our language can the whole art of poetry be so effectively learned as fromMother Goose’s Melodies. Every device of rhyme, and melody, and rhythm, and tonal color is exemplified here in a manner to produce the effects which all the great artists in verse aim at. This book that we all love—and patronize—is the greatest melodic triumph in the white man’s literature.

Of like merit and certainly no less are the folk rhymes and songs, both the Spirituals and the Seculars, of the Negro. Their art potentialities are immense. Well may the aspirant to fame in poetry put these songs in his memory and perusethem as Burns did the old popular songs of Scotland, to make them yield suggestions of songs at the highest reach of art.

But another heritage of song, not so crude nor yet so precious as the Spirituals and the Folk Rhymes has the Negro of to-day. That heritage comes from enslaved and emancipated men and women who by some means or another learned to write and publish their compositions. Although the intrinsic value of this heritage of song cannot be rated high, yet, considering the circumstances of its production, the colored people of America may well take pride in it. Its incidental value can hardly be overestimated. In it is the most infallible record we have of the Negro’s inner life in bondage and in the years following emancipation. Never broken was the tradition from Jupiter Hammon and Phillis Wheatley, in the last half of the eighteenth century, to Paul Laurence Dunbar and Joseph Seamon Cotter, in the end of the nineteenth, but constantly enriched by an increasing number of men and women who sought in the form of verse a record of their sufferings and yearnings, consolations and hopes.

Jupiter Hammon was the first American Negro poet of whom any record exists. His first extantpoem, “An Evening Thought,” bears the date of 1760, preceding therefore any poem by Phillis Wheatley, his contemporary, by nine years. Following the title of the poem this information is given: “Composed by Jupiter Hammon, a Negro belonging to Mr. Lloyd, of Queen’s Village, on Long Island, the 25th of December, 1760.” With this poem of eighty-eight rhyming lines, printed on a double-column broadside, entered the American Negro into American literature. For that reason alone, were his stanzas inferior to what they are, I should include some of them in this anthology. But the truth is that, as “religious” poetry goes, or went in the eighteenth century—and Hammon’s poetry is all religious—this Negro slave may hold up his head in almost any company.

Nevertheless, the reader must not expect poetry in the typical stanzas I shall quote, but just some remarkable rhyming for an African slave, untaught and without precedent. “An Evening Thought” runs in such stanzas as the following:

Dear Jesus give thy Spirit now,Thy Grace to every Nation,That han’t the Lord to whom we bow,The Author of Salvation.

From “An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley, Ethiopian Poetess,” I take the following as a representative stanza:

While thousands muse with earthly toys,And range about the street,Dear Phillis, seek for heaven’s joys,Where we do hope to meet.

“A Poem for Children, with Thoughts on Death,” contains such stanzas as this:

’Tis God alone can make you wise,His wisdom’s from above,He fills the soul with sweet suppliesBy his redeeming love.

Two stanzas from “A Dialogue, Entitled, The Kind Master and the Dutiful Servant,” will show how that poem runs:

MASTER

Then will the happy day appear,That virtue shall increase;Lay up the sword and drop the spear,And Nations seek for peace.

SERVANT

Then shall we see the happy end,Tho’ still in some distress;That distant foes shall act like friends,And leave their wickedness.

Jupiter Hammon’s birth and death dates are uncommemorated because unknown. Unknown, too, is his grave. But to his memory, no less than to that of Crispus Attucks, there should somewhere be erected a monument.

Phillis Wheatley

Since Stedman included in hisLibrary of American Literaturea picture of Phillis Wheatley and specimens of her verse, a few white persons, less than scholars and more than general readers, knew, when Dunbar appeared, that there had been at least one poetic predecessor in his race. But the long stretch between the slave-girl rhymer of Boston and the elevator-boy singer of Dayton was desert. They knew not of George Moses Horton of North Carolina, who found publication forPoems by a Slavein 1829, andPoetical Worksin 1845. Horton, who learned to write by his own efforts, is said to have been so fond of poetry that he would pick up any chance scraps of paper he saw, hoping to find verses. They knew not of Ann Plato,of Hartford, Connecticut, a slave girl who published a book of twenty poems in 1841; nor of Frances Ellen Watkins (afterwards Harper) whosePoems on Miscellaneous Subjectsappeared in 1857, reaching a circulation of ten thousand copies; nor of Charles L. Reason, whose poem entitledFreedom, published in 1847, voiced the cry of millions of fellow blacks in bonds.

Charles L. Reason

Thus bursts forth Reason’s poetic cry, not unlike that of the crude Spirituals:

O Freedom! Freedom! Oh, how oftThy loving children call on Thee!In wailings loud and breathings soft,Beseeching God, Thy face to see.With agonizing hearts we kneel,While ’round us howls the oppressor’s cry,—And suppliant pray that we may feelThe ennobling glances of Thine eye.

O Freedom! Freedom! Oh, how oftThy loving children call on Thee!In wailings loud and breathings soft,Beseeching God, Thy face to see.

With agonizing hearts we kneel,While ’round us howls the oppressor’s cry,—And suppliant pray that we may feelThe ennobling glances of Thine eye.

The apostrophe continues through forty-two stanzas, commemorating, with appreciative knowledge of history, the countries, battle fields, and heroes associated with the advance of freedom. After an arraignment of civil rulers and a recreant priesthood, the learned and noble apostrophe thus concludes:

Oh, purify each holy court!The ministry of law and light!That man no longer may be boughtTo trample down his brother’s right.We lift imploring hands to Thee!We cry for those in prison bound!Oh, in Thy strength come! Liberty!And ’stablish right the wide world round.We pray to see Thee, face to face:To feel our souls grow strong and wide:So ever shall our injured raceBy Thy firm principles abide.

Oh, purify each holy court!The ministry of law and light!That man no longer may be boughtTo trample down his brother’s right.

We lift imploring hands to Thee!We cry for those in prison bound!Oh, in Thy strength come! Liberty!And ’stablish right the wide world round.

We pray to see Thee, face to face:To feel our souls grow strong and wide:So ever shall our injured raceBy Thy firm principles abide.

By some means or other, self-guided, the North Carolina slave, George Moses Horton, learned to read and write. His first book,Poems by a Slave, appeared in 1829, and other books followed until 1865. Like Hammon, and true to his race, Horton is religious, and, like Reason, and again true to his race, he loves freedom. I choose but a few stanzas to illustrate his quality as a poet:

Alas! and am I born for this,To wear this slavish chain?Deprived of all created bliss,Through hardship, toil, and pain?How long have I in bondage lain,And languished to be free!Alas! and must I still complain,Deprived of liberty?****Come, Liberty! thou cheerful sound,Roll through my ravished ears;Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,And drive away my fears.

Alas! and am I born for this,To wear this slavish chain?Deprived of all created bliss,Through hardship, toil, and pain?

How long have I in bondage lain,And languished to be free!Alas! and must I still complain,Deprived of liberty?****Come, Liberty! thou cheerful sound,Roll through my ravished ears;Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,And drive away my fears.

A female poet of the same period as Horton wrote in the same strain about freedom:

Make me a grave wher’er you will,In a lowly plain or a lofty hill;Make it among earth’s humblest graves,But not in a land where men are slaves.

Like Horton, she lived to see her prayer for freedom answered. Of the Emancipation Proclamation she burst forth in joy:

It shall flash through coming ages,It shall light the distant years;And eyes now dim with sorrowShall be brighter through their tears.

This slave woman was Frances Ellen Watkins, by marriage Harper. Mrs. Harper attained to agreater popularity than any poet of her race prior to Dunbar. As many as ten thousand copies of some of her poems were in circulation in the middle of the last century. Her success was not unmerited. Many singers of no greater merit have enjoyed greater celebrity. She was thoroughly in the fashion of her times, as Phillis Wheatley was in the yet prevalent fashion of Pope, or, perhaps more accurately, Cowper. The models in the middle of the nineteenth century were Mrs. Hemans, Whittier, and Longfellow. It is in their manner she writes. A serene and beautiful Christian spirit tells a moral tale in fluent ballad stanzas, not without poetic phrasing. In all she beholds, in all she experiences, there is a lesson. There is no grief without its consolation. Serene resignation breathes through all her poems—at least through those written after her freedom was achieved. Illustrations of these traits abound. A few stanzas fromGo Work in My Vineyardwill suffice. After bitter disappointments in attempting to fulfil the command the “lesson” comes thus sweetly expressed:

F. E. W. Harper

My hands were weak, but I reached them outTo feebler ones than mine,And over the shadows of my lifeStole the light of a peace divine.Oh, then my task was a sacred thing,How precious it grew in my eyes!’Twas mine to gather the bruised grainFor the Lord of Paradise.And when the reapers shall lay their grainOn the floors of golden light,I feel that mine with its broken sheavesShall be precious in His sight.Though thorns may often pierce my feet,And the shadows still abide,The mists will vanish before His smile,There will be light at eventide.

My hands were weak, but I reached them outTo feebler ones than mine,And over the shadows of my lifeStole the light of a peace divine.

Oh, then my task was a sacred thing,How precious it grew in my eyes!’Twas mine to gather the bruised grainFor the Lord of Paradise.

And when the reapers shall lay their grainOn the floors of golden light,I feel that mine with its broken sheavesShall be precious in His sight.

Though thorns may often pierce my feet,And the shadows still abide,The mists will vanish before His smile,There will be light at eventide.

How successfully Mrs. Harper could draw a lesson from the common objects or occurrences of the world about us may be illustrated by the following poem:

TRUTH

A rock, for ages, stern and high,Stood frowning ’gainst the earth and sky,And never bowed his haughty crestWhen angry storms around him prest.Morn, springing from the arms of night,Had often bathed his brow with light,And kissed the shadows from his faceWith tender love and gentle grace.Day, pausing at the gates of rest,Smiled on him from the distant West,And from her throne the dark-browed NightThrew round his path her softest light.And yet he stood unmoved and proud,Nor love, nor wrath, his spirit bowed;He bared his brow to every blastAnd scorned the tempest as it passed.One day a tiny, humble seed—The keenest eye would hardly heed—Fell trembling at that stern rock’s base,And found a lowly hiding-place.A ray of light, and drop of dew,Came with a message, kind and true;They told her of the world so bright,Its love, its joy, and rosy light,And lured her from her hiding-place,To gaze upon earth’s glorious face.So, peeping timid from the ground,She clasped the ancient rock around,And climbing up with childish grace,She held him with a close embrace;Her clinging was a thing of dread;Where’er she touched a fissure spread,And he who’d breasted many a stormStood frowning there, a mangled form.A Truth, dropped in the silent earth,May seem a thing of little worth,Till, spreading round some mighty wrong,It saps its pillars proud and strong,And o’er the fallen ruin weavesThe brightest blooms and fairest leaves.

Day, pausing at the gates of rest,Smiled on him from the distant West,And from her throne the dark-browed NightThrew round his path her softest light.And yet he stood unmoved and proud,Nor love, nor wrath, his spirit bowed;He bared his brow to every blastAnd scorned the tempest as it passed.

One day a tiny, humble seed—The keenest eye would hardly heed—Fell trembling at that stern rock’s base,And found a lowly hiding-place.A ray of light, and drop of dew,Came with a message, kind and true;They told her of the world so bright,Its love, its joy, and rosy light,And lured her from her hiding-place,To gaze upon earth’s glorious face.

So, peeping timid from the ground,She clasped the ancient rock around,And climbing up with childish grace,She held him with a close embrace;Her clinging was a thing of dread;Where’er she touched a fissure spread,And he who’d breasted many a stormStood frowning there, a mangled form.

A Truth, dropped in the silent earth,May seem a thing of little worth,Till, spreading round some mighty wrong,It saps its pillars proud and strong,And o’er the fallen ruin weavesThe brightest blooms and fairest leaves.

The story of Vashti, who dared heroically to disobey her monarch-husband, is as well told in simple ballad measure as one may find it. I give it entire:

VASHTI

She leaned her head upon her handAnd heard the King’s decree—“My lords are feasting in my halls;Bid Vashti come to me.“I’ve shown the treasures of my house,My costly jewels rare,But with the glory of her eyesNo rubies can compare.“Adorn’d and crown’d I’d have her come,With all her queenly grace,And, ’mid my lords and mighty men,Unveil her lovely face.“Each gem that sparkles in my crown,Or glitters on my throne,Grows poor and pale when she appears,My beautiful, my own!”All waiting stood the chamberlainsTo hear the Queen’s reply.They saw her cheek grow deathly pale,But light flash’d to her eye:“Go, tell the King,” she proudly said,“That I am Persia’s Queen,And by his crowds of merry menI never will be seen.“I’ll take the crown from off my headAnd tread it ’neath my feet,Before their rude and careless gazeMy shrinking eyes shall meet.“A queen unveil’d before the crowd!—Upon each lip my name!—Why, Persia’s women all would blushAnd weep for Vashti’s shame!“Go back!” she cried, and waved her hand,And grief was in her eye:“Go, tell the King,” she sadly said,“That I would rather die.”They brought her message to the King;Dark flash’d his angry eye;’Twas as the lightning ere the stormHath swept in fury by.Then bitterly outspoke the King,Through purple lips of wrath—“What shall be done to her who daresTo cross your monarch’s path?”Then spake his wily counsellors—“O King of this fair land!From distant Ind to Ethiop,All bow to thy command.“But if, before thy servants’ eyes,This thing they plainly see,That Vashti doth not heed thy willNor yield herself to thee,“The women, restive ’neath our rule,Would learn to scorn our name,And from her deed to us would comeReproach and burning shame.“Then, gracious King, sign with thy handThis stern but just decree,That Vashti lay aside her crown,Thy Queen no more to be.”She heard again the King’s command,And left her high estate;Strong in her earnest womanhood,She calmly met her fate,And left the palace of the King,Proud of her spotless name—A woman who could bend to griefBut would not bow to shame.

She leaned her head upon her handAnd heard the King’s decree—“My lords are feasting in my halls;Bid Vashti come to me.

“I’ve shown the treasures of my house,My costly jewels rare,But with the glory of her eyesNo rubies can compare.

“Adorn’d and crown’d I’d have her come,With all her queenly grace,And, ’mid my lords and mighty men,Unveil her lovely face.

“Each gem that sparkles in my crown,Or glitters on my throne,Grows poor and pale when she appears,My beautiful, my own!”

All waiting stood the chamberlainsTo hear the Queen’s reply.They saw her cheek grow deathly pale,But light flash’d to her eye:

“Go, tell the King,” she proudly said,“That I am Persia’s Queen,And by his crowds of merry menI never will be seen.

“I’ll take the crown from off my headAnd tread it ’neath my feet,Before their rude and careless gazeMy shrinking eyes shall meet.

“A queen unveil’d before the crowd!—Upon each lip my name!—Why, Persia’s women all would blushAnd weep for Vashti’s shame!

“Go back!” she cried, and waved her hand,And grief was in her eye:“Go, tell the King,” she sadly said,“That I would rather die.”

They brought her message to the King;Dark flash’d his angry eye;’Twas as the lightning ere the stormHath swept in fury by.

Then bitterly outspoke the King,Through purple lips of wrath—“What shall be done to her who daresTo cross your monarch’s path?”

Then spake his wily counsellors—“O King of this fair land!From distant Ind to Ethiop,All bow to thy command.

“But if, before thy servants’ eyes,This thing they plainly see,That Vashti doth not heed thy willNor yield herself to thee,

“The women, restive ’neath our rule,Would learn to scorn our name,And from her deed to us would comeReproach and burning shame.

“Then, gracious King, sign with thy handThis stern but just decree,That Vashti lay aside her crown,Thy Queen no more to be.”

She heard again the King’s command,And left her high estate;Strong in her earnest womanhood,She calmly met her fate,

And left the palace of the King,Proud of her spotless name—A woman who could bend to griefBut would not bow to shame.

Those last stanzas are quite as noble as any that one may find in the poets whom I named as setting the American fashion in the era of Mrs. Harper. The poems of this gentle, sweet-spirited Negro woman deserve a better fate than has overtaken them.

Although this is not a history of American Negro poetry, yet a brief notice must be given at this point to two other writers too important to be omitted even from a swift survey like the present one. They are J. Madison Bell and Albery A. Whitman.

James Madison Bell

Bell, anti-slavery orator and friend of John Brown’s, was a prolific writer of eloquent verse. His original endowments were considerable. Denied an education in boyhood, he learned a trade and in manhood at night-schools gained access to the wisdom of books. He became a master of expression both with tongue and pen. His long period of productivity covers the history of his people from the decade before Emancipation till the death of Dunbar. Bell’s themes are lofty and he writes with fervid eloquence. There is something of Byronic power in the roll of his verse. An extract fromThe Progress of Libertywill be representative, though an extract cannot show either the maintenance of power or the abundance of resources:

O Liberty, what charm so great!One radiant smile, one look of thineCan change the drooping bondsman’s fate,And light his brow with hope divine.His manhood, wrapped in rayless gloom,At thy approach throws off its pall,And rising up, as from the tomb,Stands forth defiant of the thrall.No tyrant’s power can crush the soulIllumed by thine inspiring ray;The fiendishness of base controlFlies thy approach as night from day.Ride onward, in thy chariot ride,Thou peerless queen; ride on, ride on—With Truth and Justice by thy side—From pole to pole, from sun to sun!Nor linger in our bleeding South,Nor domicile with race or clan;But in thy glorious goings forth,Be thy benignant object Man—Of every clime, of every hue,Of every tongue, of every race,’Neath heaven’s broad, ethereal blue;Oh! let thy radiant smiles embrace,Till neither slave nor one oppressedRemain throughout creation’s span,By thee unpitied and unblestOf all the progeny of man.We fain would have the world aspireTo that proud height of free desire,That flamed the heart of Switzer’s Tell(Whose archery skill none could excell),When once upon his Alpine brow,He stood reclining on his bow,And saw, careering in his might—In all his majesty of flight—A lordly eagle float and swingUpon his broad, untrammeled wing.He bent his bow, he poised his dart,With full intent to pierce the heart;But as the proud bird nearer drew,His stalwart arm unsteady grew,His arrow lingered in the groove—The cord unwilling seemed to move,For there he saw personifiedThat freedom which had been his pride;And as the eagle onward sped,O’er lofty hill and towering tree,He dropped his bow, he bowed his head;He could not shoot—’twas Liberty!

O Liberty, what charm so great!One radiant smile, one look of thineCan change the drooping bondsman’s fate,And light his brow with hope divine.

His manhood, wrapped in rayless gloom,At thy approach throws off its pall,And rising up, as from the tomb,Stands forth defiant of the thrall.No tyrant’s power can crush the soulIllumed by thine inspiring ray;The fiendishness of base controlFlies thy approach as night from day.

Ride onward, in thy chariot ride,Thou peerless queen; ride on, ride on—With Truth and Justice by thy side—From pole to pole, from sun to sun!Nor linger in our bleeding South,Nor domicile with race or clan;But in thy glorious goings forth,Be thy benignant object Man—

Of every clime, of every hue,Of every tongue, of every race,’Neath heaven’s broad, ethereal blue;Oh! let thy radiant smiles embrace,Till neither slave nor one oppressedRemain throughout creation’s span,By thee unpitied and unblestOf all the progeny of man.

We fain would have the world aspireTo that proud height of free desire,That flamed the heart of Switzer’s Tell(Whose archery skill none could excell),When once upon his Alpine brow,He stood reclining on his bow,And saw, careering in his might—In all his majesty of flight—A lordly eagle float and swingUpon his broad, untrammeled wing.

He bent his bow, he poised his dart,With full intent to pierce the heart;But as the proud bird nearer drew,His stalwart arm unsteady grew,His arrow lingered in the groove—The cord unwilling seemed to move,For there he saw personifiedThat freedom which had been his pride;And as the eagle onward sped,O’er lofty hill and towering tree,He dropped his bow, he bowed his head;He could not shoot—’twas Liberty!

Whitman, a younger contemporary of Bell’s, is the author of several long tales in verse. Like Bell, he wrote only in standard English, and like him also, shows a mastery of expression, with fluency of style, wealth of imagery, and a command of the forms of verse given vogue by Scott and Byron. Both likewise write fervently of the wrongs suffered by the black man at the hands of the white. Thus far they resemble; but if we extend the comparison we note important differences. Bell has more of the fervor of the orator and the sense of fact of the historian. He adheres closely to events and celebrates occasions. Whitman invents tragic tales of love and romance, clothing them with the charm of the South and infusing into them the pathos which results fromthe strife of thwarted passions, the defeat of true love.

A stanza or two from Whitman’sAn Idyl of the Southwill exemplify his qualities. The hero of this pathetic tale is a white youth of aristocratic parentage, the heroine is an octoroon. He is thus described:

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