Chapter VIII

I give his “Goodbye, Old Year.” Another poem of similar technique takes for its title the last words of Colonel Roosevelt: “Turn out the light, please.” The reader cannot but note the sense of proper effect exhibited in the short sentences, the very manner of a dying man. But more than this will be perceived in this poem. It will seem to have sprung out of the world-weary soul of the young poet himself. Struggle, grief, weariness in the strife, have been his also. Hence:

TURN OUT THE LIGHT

Turn out the light. Now would I slumber, I’m weary with the toil of day. Let me forget my pains to number. Turn out the light. Dreams come to play.

Turn out the light. The hours were dreary. Clouds of despair long hid the sun. I’ve battled hard and now I’m weary. Turn out the light. My day is done.

I’ve done life’s best gloom’s ways to brighten-- I’ve scattered cheer from heart to heart, And where I could I’ve sought to righten The wrongs of men ere day depart.

This morn ’twas bright with hope--and cheery. This noon gave courage--made me brave. But as the sun sank I grew weary Till now my soul for rest doth crave.

Turn out the light. I’ve done my duty To friend and enemy as well. I go to sleep where things of beauty In glitt’ring chambers ever dwell.

Turn out the light. Now would I slumber. To rest--to dream--soon go we all. Let’s hope we wake soul free of cumber. Turn out the light. Dream comrades call.

The next piece I select from Mr. Jones’s first book will represent his talent in another sphere. I suggest that comparison might be made between this song in literary English and Mr. Johnson’s Negro love song in dialect, page 226.

A SOUTHERN LOVE SONG

Dogwoods all a-bloom Perfume earth’s big room, White full moon is gliding o’er the sky serene. Quiet reigns about, In the house and out; Hoot owl in the hollow mopes with solemn mien. Birds have gone to rest In each tree-top nest; Cotton fields a-shimmer flash forth silver-green.

O’er the wild cane brake, Whip-poor-wills awake, And they speak in tender voicings, Heart, of You. Answering my call, Through the leafy hall, Telling how I’m waiting for your tripping, Sue. All the world is glad, Just because I’m mad. Sense-bereft am I through my great love for you.

Night is all a-smile, Happy all the while. That is why my heart so filled with song o’erflows. I have tarried long, Lilting here my song. And I’ll ever waiting be till life’s step slows. Come to me, my girl, Precious more than pearl, I’ll be waiting for you where the grapevine grows.

How my heart doth yearn, And with anguish burn, Hungry for sweet pains awaked with your embrace. Starward goes my cry. Echo hears my sigh. Heaven itself its pity at my plight shows trace. Parson waits to wed. Soon the nuptials said. I’ve a rose-clad cottage reared for you to grace.

The title-piece of Mr. Jones’s first volume reveals his mastery of effective form and his command of the language of passionate appeal. The World War, in which the Negroes of the country gave liberally and heroically, both of blood and treasure, for democracy, quickened failing hopes in them and kindled anew their aspirations. In this poem the writer speaks for his entire race:

THE HEART OF THE WORLD

In the heart of the world is the call for peace-- Up-surging, symphonic roar. ’Tis ill of all clashings; it seeks release From fetters of greed and gore. The winds of the battlefields echo the sigh Of heroes slumbering deep, Who gave all they had and now dreamlessly lie Where the bayonets sent them to sleep.

_Peace for the wealthy; peace for the poor; Peace on the hillside, and peace on the moor._

In the heart of the world is the call for right: For fingers to bind up the wound, Slashed deep by the ruthless, harsh hand of might, When Justice is crushed to the ground. ’Tis ill of the fevers of fear of the strong-- Of jealousies--prejudice--pride. “Is there no ideal that’s proof against wrong?” Man asks of the man at his side.

_Right for the lowly; right for the great; Right all to pilot to happiness’ gate._

In the heart of the world is the call for love: White heart--Red--Yellow--and Black. Each face turns to Bethlehem’s bright star above, Though wolves of self howl at each back. The whole earth is lifting its voice in a prayer That nations may learn to endure, Without killing and maiming, but doing what’s fair With a soul that is noble and pure.

_Love in weak peoples; love in the strong; Love that will banish all hatred and wrong._

In the heart of the world is the call of God; East--West--and North--and South. Stirring, deep-yearning, breast-heaving call for God A-tremble behind each mouth. The heart’s ill of torments that rend men’s souls. Skyward lift all faiths and hopes; Across all the oceans the evidence rolls, Refreshing all life’s arid slopes.

_God in the highborn; God in the low; God calls us, world-brothers. Hark ye! and know._

From _Poems of the Four Seas_ I will take a piece that gives the Negro background for the yearning expressed in the foregoing poem:

BROTHERS

They bind his feet; they thong his hands With hard hemp rope and iron bands. They scourge his back in ghoulish glee; And bleed his flesh;--men, mark ye--free. They still his groans with fiendish shout, Where flesh streams red they ply the knout. Thus sons of men feed lust to kill And yet, oh God! they’re brothers still.

They build a pyre of torch and flame While Justice weeps in deepest shame. E’en Death in pity bows its head, Yet ’midst these men no prayer is said. They gather up charred flesh and bone-- Mementos--boasting brave deed done. They sip of gore their souls to fill; Drink deep of blood their hands did spill.

Go tell the world what men have done Who prate of God and yet have none; Think of themselves as wholly good, Blaspheme the name of brotherhood; Who hearken not as brothers cry For brother’s chance to live and die. To keep a demon’s murder tryst They’d rend the sepulcher of Christ.

_VIII. Walter Everette Hawkins_

CREDO

I am an Iconoclast. I break the limbs of idols And smash the traditions of men.

I am an Anarchist. I believe in war and destruction-- Not in the killing of men, But the killing of creed and custom.

I am an Agnostic. I accept nothing without questioning. It is my inherent right and duty To ask the reason why. To accept without a reason Is to debase one’s humanity And destroy the fundamental process In the ascertainment of Truth.

I believe in Justice and Freedom. To me Liberty is priestly and kingly; Freedom is my Bride, Liberty my Angel of Light, Justice my God.

I oppose all laws of state or country, All creeds of church and social orders, All conventionalities of society and system Which cross the path of the light of Freedom Or obstruct the reign of Right.

This is a faithful self-characterization--such a man in reality is Walter Everette Hawkins. A fearless and independent and challenging spirit. He is the rare kind of man that must put everything to the severe test of absolute principles. He hates shams, hypocrisies, compromises, chicaneries, injustices. His poems are the bold and faithful expressions of his personality. Free he has ever been, free he will be ever, striking right out for freedom and truth. Such a personality is refreshing to meet, whether you encounter it in the flesh or in a book.

[Illustration: WALTER EVERETTE HAWKINS]

Born about thirty-five years ago, on a little farm in North Carolina, the thirteenth child of ex-slave parents, young Hawkins, one may imagine, was not opulent in this world’s goods. Nor were his opportunities such as are usually considered thrilling. A few terms of miserable schooling in the village of Warrenton, the fragments of a few more terms in a school maintained by the African Methodist Church, then--“the University of Hard Knocks.” In the two first-named schools the independent-spirited lad seems not to have gotten along well with his teachers, hence a few dismissals. Always too prone to ask troublesome, challenging questions, too prone to doubts and reflections, he was thought incorrigible. In his “University” he chose his own masters--the great free spirits of the ages--and at the feet of these he was teachable, even while the knocks were hardest.

A lover of wild nature and able to commune with nature’s spirit, deeply fond also of communing with the world’s master minds in books, Mr. Hawkins is by necessity--while his spirit soars--the slave of routine toil, being, until recently, a mail clerk in the post office of the City of Washington. “My only recreation,” he writes me, “is in stealing away to be with the masters, the intellectual dynamos, of the world, who converse with me without wincing and deliver me the key to life’s riddle.”

A true expression of himself I said Mr. Hawkins’s poems are. In no degree are they fictions. As a companion to _Credo_, quoted to introduce him, I will give the last poem in his book, which will again set him before us as he is:

HERO OF THE ROAD

Let me seek no statesman’s mantle, Let me seek no victor’s wreath, Let my sword unstained in battle Still lie rusting in its sheath; Let my garments be unsullied, Let no man’s blood to me cling; Life is love and earth is heaven, If I may but soar and sing.

This then is my sternest struggle, Ease the load and sing my song, Lift the lame and cheer the cheerless As they plod the road along; And we see ourselves transfigured In a new and bigger plan; Man transformed, his own Messiah, God embodied into man.

For the whining craven class of men Mr. Hawkins has little respect:

The man who complains When the world is all song, Or dares to sit mute When the world is all wrong; Who barters his freedom Vile honors to win, Deserves but to die With the vilest of men.

Upon the times in which we live his judgment is severe. His condemnation, however, bears witness to that earnestness of soul and that idealism of spirit which will not let the world repose in its wickedness. From a list of several poems attesting this I select the following as perhaps the most complete in form:

THE DEATH OF JUSTICE

These the dread days which the seers have foretold, These the fell years which the prophets have dreamed; Visions they saw in those full days of old, The fathers have sinned and the children blasphemed. Hurt is the world, and its heart is unhealed, Wrong sways the sceptre and Justice must yield.

We have come to the travail of troublous times, Justice must bow before Moloch and Baal; Blasphemous prayers for the triumph of crimes, High sounds the cry of the children who wail. Hurt is the world, and its heart is unhealed, Wrong sways the sceptre and Justice must yield.

In the brute strength of the sword men rely, They count not Justice in reckoning things; Whom their lips worship their hearts crucify, This the oblation the votary brings. Hurt is the world, and its heart is unhealed, Wrong sways the sceptre and Justice must yield.

Locked in death-struggle humanity’s host, Seeking revenge with the dagger and sword; This is the pride which the Pharisees boast, Man damns his brother in the name of his Lord. Hurt is the world, and its heart is unhealed, Wrong sways the sceptre and Justice must yield.

Time dims the glare of the pomp and applause, Vainglorious monarchs and proud princes fall; Until the death of Time revokes his laws, His awful mandate shall reign over all. Hurt is the world, and its heart is unhealed, Wrong sways the sceptre and Justice must yield.

A number of Mr. Hawkins’s productions reveal possibilities of beauty and effectiveness, which he had not the patience or the skill to realize. One imagines that he has never been able to bring his spirit to a submissive study of the minutiæ of metrical composition. A poet _in esse_--or _in posse_--is all that nature ever makes. And even the most free spirit must know well the traditions. Whether this iconoclast knows the Cavalier traditions of English poetry may be left to conjecture, but the following piece, illustrating Mr. Hawkins’s faults and virtues as a singer, will prove his kinship to the poetic tribe of which Lovelace and Suckling were conspicuous members:

ASK ME WHY I LOVE YOU

Ask me why I love you, dear, And I will ask the rose Why it loves the dews of Spring At the Winter’s close; Why the blossoms’ nectared sweets Loved by questing bee,-- I will gladly answer you, If they answer me.

Ask me why I love you, dear, I will ask the flower Why it loves the Summer sun, Or the Summer shower; I will ask the lover’s heart Why it loves the moon, Or the star-besprinkled skies In a night in June.

Ask me why I love you, dear, I will ask the vine Why its tendrils trustingly Round the oak entwine; Why you love the mignonette Better than the rue,-- If you will but answer me, I will answer you.

Ask me why I love you, dear, Let the lark reply, Why his heart is full of song When the twilight’s nigh; Why the lover heaves a sigh When her heart is true; If you will but answer me, I will answer you.

_IX. Claude McKay_

[Illustration: CLAUDE MCKAY]

An English subject, being born and growing to manhood in Jamaica, Claude McKay, a pure blood Negro, was first discovered as a poet by English critics. In Jamaica, as early as 1911, when he was but twenty-two years of age, his _Constab Ballads_, in Negro dialect, was published. Even in so broken a tongue this book revealed a poet--on the constabulary force of Jamaica. In 1920 his first book of poems in literary English, _Spring in New Hamp-Shire_, came out in England, with a _Preface_ by Mr. I. A. Richards, of Cambridge, England. Meanwhile, shortly after the publication of his first book, he had come to the United States.

Here he has worked at various occupations, has taken courses in Agriculture and English in the Kansas State College, and has thus become acquainted with life in the States. He is now on the editorial staff of the _Liberator_, New York. There has been no poet of his race who has more poignantly felt and more artistically expressed the life of the American Negro. His poetry is a most noteworthy contribution to literature. From _Spring in New Hampshire_ I am privileged to take a number of poems which will follow without comment:

SPRING IN NEW HAMPSHIRE

Too green the springing April grass, Too blue the silver-speckled sky, For me to linger here, alas, While happy winds go laughing by, Wasting the golden hours indoors, Washing windows and scrubbing floors.

Too wonderful the April night, Too faintly sweet the first May flowers, The stars too gloriously bright, For me to spend the evening hours, When fields are fresh and streams are leaping, Wearied, exhausted, dully sleeping.

THE LYNCHING

His spirit in smoke ascended to high heaven. His Father, by the cruelest way of pain, Had bidden him to his bosom once again; The awful sin remained still unforgiven: All night a bright and solitary star (Perchance the one that ever guided him, Yet gave him up at last to Fate’s wild whim) Hung pitifully o’er the swinging char. Day dawned, and soon the mixed crowds came to view The ghastly body swaying in the sun: The women thronged to look, but never a one Showed sorrow in her eyes of steely blue, And little lads, lynchers that were to be, Danced round the dreadful thing in fiendish glee.

THE HARLEM DANCER

Applauding youths laughed with young prostitutes And watched her perfect, half-clothed body sway; Her voice was like the sound of blended flutes Blown by black players upon a picnic day. She sang and danced on gracefully and calm, The light gauze hanging loose about her form; To me she seemed a proudly-swaying palm Grown lovelier for passing through a storm. Upon her swarthy neck, black, shiny curls Profusely fell; and, tossing coins in praise, The wine-flushed, bold-eyed boys, and even the girls, Devoured her with eager, passionate gaze: But, looking at her falsely-smiling face, I knew her self was not in that strange place.

IN BONDAGE

I would be wandering in distant fields Where man, and bird, and beast live leisurely, And the old earth is kind and ever yields Her goodly gifts to all her children free; Where life is fairer, lighter, less demanding, And boys and girls have time and space for play Before they come to years of understanding,-- Somewhere I would be singing, far away; For life is greater than the thousand wars Men wage for it in their insatiate lust, And will remain like the eternal stars When all that is to-day is ashes and dust: But I am bound with you in your mean graves, Oh, black men, simple slaves of ruthless slaves.

Distinction of idea and phrase inheres in these poems. In them the Negro is esthetically conceived, and interpreted with vision. This is art working as it should. Mr. McKay has passion and the control of it to the ends of art. He has the poet’s insight, the poet’s understanding.

Perhaps the most arresting poem in this list, and the one most surely attesting the genius of the writer, is _The Harlem Dancer_. It is an achievement in portrayal sufficient by itself to establish a poetic reputation. The divination that penetrates to the secret purity of soul, or nobleness of character, through denying appearances--how rare is the faculty, and how necessary! Elsewhere I give a poem from a Negro woman which evinces the same divine gift in the author, exhibited in a poem no less original and no less deeply impressive--Mrs. Spencer’s _At the Carnival_. Here I will companion _The Harlem Dancer_ with one from Mr. Dandridge, for the comparison will deepen the effect of each:

ZALKA PEETRUZA

(_Who Was Christened Lucy Jane_)

She danced, near nude, to tom-tom beat, With swaying arms and flying feet, ’Mid swirling spangles, gauze and lace, Her all was dancing--save her face.

A conscience, dumb to brooding fears, Companioned hearing deaf to cheers; A body, marshalled by the will, Kept dancing while a heart stood still:

And eyes obsessed with vacant stare Looked over heads to empty air, As though they sought to find therein Redemption for a maiden sin.

’Twas thus, amid force-driven grace, We found the lost look on her face; And then, to us, did it occur That, though we saw--we saw not her.

Returning to Mr. McKay, we may assert that his new volume of verse, _Harlem Shadows_, confirms and enhances the estimate of him we have expressed.

_X. Leslie Pinckney Hill_

[Illustration: LESLIE PINCKNEY HILL]

Bearing the diploma of the Lyric Muse, Mr. Leslie Pinckney Hill, schoolmaster of Cheyney, Pennsylvania, and authentic singer, is one of the newest arrivals on the slopes of Parnassus. A first glance tells that he is an agile climber, sinewy, easy of movement, light of step, with both grace and strength. Every indication in form and motion is for some point far up toward the summit. Youthful he is, ambitious, plainly, and, in spite of a burden, buoyant. “Climber,” I said. I will drop the figure. Poets were never pedestrians. Mr. Hill comes not afoot. If not on the wings of Pegasus, yet on wings he comes--_the wings of oppression_. Sad wings! yet it must be remarked that it is commonly on such wings that poets of whatever race and time rise. And Mr. Hill’s race knows no other wings. On the wings of oppression the Negro poet and the Negro people are rising toward the summits of Parnassus, Pisgah, and other peaks. This they know, too, and of it they are justly proud.

In his _Foreword_ Mr. Hill thus states the case of his people, and, by implication, of himself: “Nothing in the life of the nation has seemed to me more significant than that dark civilization which the colored man has built up in the midst of a white society organized against it. The Negro has been driven under all the burdens of oppression, both material and spiritual, to the brink of desperation, but he has always been saved by his philosophy of life. He has advanced against all opposition by a certain elevation of his spirit. He has been made strong in tribulation. He has constrained oppression to give him wings.”

The significant thing about these wings, in a critical view, is that they fulfill the proper function of wings--bear aloft and sustain in flight through the azure depths. Mr. Hill’s wings do bear aloft and sustain: if not always, nor even ever, into the very empyrean of poetry yet invariably, seventy times, into the ampler air. Like all his race, he has suffered much; and, like all his race still, he has gathered wisdom from sorrow. As a true poet should have, he has philosophy, also vision and imagination--vision for himself and his people, imagination that sees facts in terms of beauty and presents truths with vital imagery. Add thereto craftsmanship acquired in the best traditions of English poetry and you have Hill the poet.

The merit of his book cannot be shown by lines and stanzas. As ever with true art, the merit lies in the whole effect of complete poems. Still, we may here first detach from this and that poem a stanza or two, despite the wrong to art. The first and fourth stanzas of the title-poem will indicate Mr. Hill’s technique and philosophy:

I have a song that few will sing In honor of all suffering, A song to which my heart can bring The homage of believing-- A song the heavy-laden hears Above the clamor of his fears, While still he walks with blinding tears, And drains the cup of grieving.

* * * * *

So long as life is steeped in wrong, And nations cry: “How long, how long!” I look not to the wise and strong For peace and self-possession; But right will rise, and mercy shine, And justice lift her conquering sign Where lowly people starve and pine Beneath a world oppression.

The character and temper of the Negro in those gentler aspects which make such an appeal to the heart are revealed in the following sonnet:

MATER DOLOROSA

O mother, there are moments when I know God’s presence to the full. The city street May wrap me in the tumult and the heat Of futile striving; bitter winds may blow With winter-wilting freeze of hail and snow, And all my hopes lie shattered in defeat; But in my heart the springtime blossoms sweet, And heaven seems very near the way I go.

These moments are the angels of that prayer Which thou hast breathed for many a troubled year With bended knee and swarthy-streaming face-- “Uphold him, Father, with a double care: He is but mortal, yet his days must bear The world cross, and the burden of his race.”

If these poems, taken collectively, do not declare “what is on the Negro’s mind” they yet truly reveal, to the reflecting person, what has sunk deep into his heart. They are therefore a message to America, a protest, an appeal, and a warning. They will penetrate, I predict, through breast-armor of _aes triplex_ into the hearts of those whom sermons and editorials fail to touch in the springs of action. Such is the virtue of music wed to persuasive words. In strong lines of soaring blank verse, in which Mr. Hill is particularly capable, he makes a direct appeal to America in behalf of his people, in a poem entitled Armageddon:

Because ye schooled them in the arts of life, And gave to them your God, and poured your blood Into their veins to make them what they are, They shall not fail you in the hour of need. They own in them enough of you to feel All that has made you masters in your time-- Dear art and riches, unremitting toil, Proud types of beauty, an unbounded will To triumph, wondrous science and old law-- These have they learned to covet and to share.

But deeper in them still is something steeled To hot abhorrence and unmeasured dread Of your undaunted sins against the light-- Red sins of lust, of envy and of hate, Of guilty gain extorted from the weak, Of brotherhood traduced, and God denied. All this have they beheld without revolt, And borne the brunt in agonizing prayer.

For other strains of blood that flow from times Older than Egypt, whence the dark man gave The rudiments of learning to all lands, Have been a strong constraint. And they have dreamed Of a peculiar mission under heaven, And felt the force of unexampled gifts That make for them a rare inheritance-- The gift of cheerful confidence in man, The gift of calm endurance, solacing An infinite capacity for pain, The gift of an unfeigned humility, Blinding the eyes of strident arrogance And bigot pride to that philosophy And that far-glancing wisdom which it veils, Of joy in beauty, hardihood in toil, Of hope in tribulation, and of wide Adaptive power without a parallel In chronicles of men.

A sonnet entitled _To a Caged Canary in a Negro Restaurant_ will present the poet’s people with the persuasiveness of pathos as the foregoing poem with the persuasiveness of reason:

Thou little golden bird of happy song! A cage cannot restrain the rapturous joy Which thou dost shed abroad. Thou dost employ Thy bondage for high uses. Grievous wrong Is thine; yet in thy heart glows full and strong The tropic sun, though far beyond thy flight, And though thou flutterest there by day and night Above the clamor of a dusky throng. So let my will, albeit hedged about By creed and caste, feed on the light within; So let my song sing through the bars of doubt With light and healing where despair has been; So let my people bide their time and place, A hindered but a sunny-hearted race.

It would be an injustice to this poet did I convey the idea that his seventy-odd poems are exclusively occupied with race wrongs and oppression. Not a few of them bear no stamp of an oppressed or afflicted spirit, though of sorrow they may have been nurtured.

A lyric of pure loveliness is the following, entitled

TO A NOBLY-GIFTED SINGER

All the pleasance of her face Telleth of an inward grace; In her dark eyes I have seen Sorrows of the Nazarene; In the proud and perfect mould Of her body I behold, Rounded in a single view, The good, the beautiful, the true; And when her spirit goes up-winging On sweet airs of artless singing, Surely the heavenly spheres rejoice In union with a kindred voice.

Schoolmaster I said Mr. Hill was. To represent his didactic quality, not his purer lyrical note, nor yet his narrative beauty, I choose the following piece:

SELF-DETERMINATION

_The Philosophy of the American Negro_

Four things we will not do, in spite of all That demons plot for our decline and fall; We bring four benedictions which the meek Unto the proud are privileged to speak, Four gifts by which amidst all stern-browed races We move with kindly hearts and shining faces.

_We will not hate._ Law, custom, creed and caste, All notwithstanding, here we hold us fast. Down through the years the mighty ships of state Have all been broken on the rocks of hate.

_We will not cease to laugh and multiply._ We slough off trouble, and refuse to die. The Indian stood unyielding, stark and grim; We saw him perish, and we learned of him To mix a grain of philosophic mirth With all the crass injustices of earth.

_We will not use the ancient carnal tools._ These never won, yet centuries of schools, Of priests, and all the work of brush and pen Have not availed to win the wisest men From futile faith in battleship and shell: We see them fall, and mark that folly well.

_We will not waver in our loyalty._ No strange voice reaches us across the sea; No crime at home shall stir us from this soil. Ours is the guerdon, ours the blight of toil, But raised above it by a faith sublime We choose to suffer _here_ and bide our time.

And if we hold to this, we dream some day Our countrymen will follow in our way.

But though teacher Leslie Pinckney Hill is singer too. And though he has a message for America he also has music. His powers are rich, varied, cultured, and developing. His second book will be better than his excellent first.

##