The Book of American Negro Poetry | Page 9

to achieve is due in no small degree to her education and environment. Her mind was steeped in the classics; her verses are filled with classical and mythological allusions. She knew Ovid thoroughly and was familiar with other Latin authors. She must have known Alexander Pope by heart. And, too, she was reared and sheltered in a wealthy and cultured family,--a wealthy and cultured Boston family; she never had the opportunity to learn life; she never found out her own true relation to life and to her surroundings. And it should not be forgotten that she was only about thirty years old when she died. The impulsion or the compulsion that might have driven her genius off the worn paths, out on a journey of exploration, Phillis Wheatley never received. But, whatever her limitations, she merits more than America has accorded her.
Horton, who was born three years after Phillis Wheatley's death, expressed in all of his poetry strong complaint at his condition of slavery and a deep longing for freedom. The following verses are typical of his style and his ability:
"Alas! and am I born for this,
To wear this slavish chain??Deprived of all created bliss,?Through hardship, toil, and pain?

Come, Liberty! thou cheerful sound,?Roll through my ravished ears;?Come, let my grief in joys be drowned,?And drive away my fears."
In Mrs. Harper we find something more than the complaint and the longing of Horton. We find an expression of a sense of wrong and injustice. The following stanzas are from a poem addressed to the white women of America:
"You can sigh o'er the sad-eyed Armenian
Who weeps in her desolate home.?You can mourn o'er the exile of Russia?From kindred and friends doomed to roam.

But hark! from our Southland are floating?Sobs of anguish, murmurs of pain,?And women heart-stricken are weeping?O'er their tortured and slain.

Have ye not, oh, my favored sisters,?Just a plea, a prayer or a tear?For mothers who dwell 'neath the shadows?Of agony, hatred and fear?

Weep not, oh my well sheltered sisters,?Weep not for the Negro alone,?But weep for your sons who must gather?The crops which their fathers have sown."
Whitman, in the midst of "The Rape of Florida," a poem in which he related the taking of the State of Florida from the Seminoles, stops and discusses the race question. He discusses it in many other poems; and he discusses it from many different angles. In Whitman we find not only an expression of a sense of wrong and injustice, but we hear a note of faith and a note also of defiance. For example, in the opening to Canto II of "The Rape of Florida":
"Greatness by nature cannot be entailed;?It is an office ending with the man,--?Sage, hero, Saviour, tho' the Sire be hailed,?The son may reach obscurity in the van:?Sublime achievements know no patent plan,?Man's immortality's a book with seals,?And none but God shall open--none else can--?But opened, it the mystery reveals,--?Manhood's conquest of man to heaven's respect appeals.
"Is manhood less because man's face is black??Let thunders of the loosened seals reply!?Who shall the rider's restive steed turn back,?Or who withstand the arrows he lets fly?Between the mountains of eternity??Genius ride forth! Thou gift and torch of heav'n!?The mastery is kindled in thine eye;?To conquest ride! thy bow of strength is giv'n--?The trampled hordes of caste before thee shall be driv'n!

"'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!?All earth is place--all time th' auspicious hour,?While heaven leans forth to look, oh, will 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."
It may be said that none of these poets strike a deep native strain or sound a distinctively original note, either in matter or form. That is true; but the same thing may be said of all the American poets down to the writers of the present generation, with the exception of Poe and Walt Whitman. The thing in which these black poets are mostly excelled by their contemporaries is mere technique.
Paul Laurence Dunbar stands out as the first poet from the Negro race in the United States to show a combined mastery over poetic material and poetic technique, to reveal innate literary distinction in what he wrote, and to maintain a high level of performance. He was the first to rise to a height from which he could take a perspective view of his