Fifty years Other Poems

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Title: Fifty years & Other Poems
Author: James Weldon Johnson
Commentator: Brander Matthews
Release Date: March 1, 2006 [EBook #17884]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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FIFTY YEARS & OTHER POEMS
BY
JAMES WELDON JOHNSON
AUTHOR OF
"THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN," ETC.
With an Introduction by

BRANDER MATTHEWS
THE CORNHILL COMPANY
BOSTON
1917
To
G. N. F.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
For permission to reprint certain poems in this book thanks are due to
the editors and proprietors of the Century Magazine, the

Independent_, _The Crisis_, _The New York Times, and the following
copyright holders, G. Ricordi and Company, G. Schirmer and
Company, and Joseph W. Stern and Company.
CONTENTS
Fifty Years
To America
O Black and Unknown Bards
O Southland
To Horace Bumstead
The Color Sergeant
The Black Mammy
Father, Father Abraham
Brothers
Fragment

The White Witch
Mother Night
The Young Warrior
The Glory of the Day Was in Her Face
From the Spanish of Plácido
From the Spanish
From the German of Uhland
Before a Painting
I Hear the Stars Still Singing
Girl of Fifteen
The Suicide
Down by the Carib Sea
I. Sunrise in the Tropics
II. Los Cigarillos

III. Teestay
IV. The Lottery Girl
V. The Dancing Girl
VI.
Sunset in the Tropics
The Greatest of These Is War
A Mid-Day Dreamer
The Temptress
Ghosts of the Old Year
The Ghost of Deacon Brown
Lazy
Omar

Deep in the Quiet Wood
Voluptas
The Word of an Engineer
Life
Sleep
Prayer at Sunrise
The Gift to Sing
Morning, Noon and Night
Her Eyes Twin Pools
The Awakening
Beauty That Is Never Old
Venus in a Garden
Vashti
The Reward
JINGLES & CROONS
Sence You Went Away
Ma Lady's Lips Am Like de Honey
Tunk
Nobody's Lookin' but de Owl an' de Moon
You's Sweet to Yo' Mammy Jes de Same

A Plantation Bacchanal
July in Georgy
A Banjo Song
Answer to Prayer
Dat Gal o' Mine
The Seasons
'Possum Song
Brer Rabbit, You'se de Cutes' of 'Em All
An Explanation
De Little Pickaninny's Gone to Sleep
The Rivals
INTRODUCTION
Of the hundred millions who make up the population of the United
States ten millions come from a stock ethnically alien to the other
ninety millions. They are not descended from ancestors who came here
voluntarily, in the spirit of adventure to better themselves or in the
spirit of devotion to make sure of freedom to worship God in their own
way. They are the grandchildren of men and women brought here
against their wills to serve as slaves. It is only half-a-century since they
received their freedom and since they were at last permitted to own
themselves. They are now American citizens, with the rights and the
duties of other American citizens; and they know no language, no
literature and no law other than those of their fellow citizens of
Anglo-Saxon ancestry.
When we take stock of ourselves these ten millions cannot be left out
of account. Yet they are not as we are; they stand apart, more or less;

they have their own distinct characteristics. It behooves us to
understand them as best we can and to discover what manner of people
they are. And we are justified in inquiring how far they have revealed
themselves, their racial characteristics, their abiding traits, their longing
aspirations,--how far have they disclosed these in one or another of the
several arts. They have had their poets, their painters, their composers,
and yet most of these have ignored their racial opportunity and have
worked in imitation and in emulation of their white predecessors and
contemporaries, content to handle again the traditional themes. The
most important and the most significant contributions they have made
to art are in music,--first in the plaintive beauty of the so-called "Negro
spirituals"--and, secondly,