The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar

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Laurence Dunbar, by Paul Laurence Dunbar
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Title: The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar
Author: Paul Laurence Dunbar
Commentator: William Dean Howells
Release Date: May 7, 2006 [EBook #18338]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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DUNBAR ***
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[Illustration: Paul Lawrence Dunbar]
THE COMPLETE POEMS
OF
PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
WITH THE INTRODUCTION TO
"LYRICS OF LOWLY
LIFE"

BY
W. D. HOWELLS
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1922
Copyright 1895, 1896, 1897, 1898, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905 BY
THE CENTURY CO.
Copyright 1897, 1898, 1901, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1905
BY THE
CURTIS PUBLISHING CO.
Copyright 1898
BY THE OUTLOOK CO.
Copyright 1898
BY J. B. WALKER
Copyright 1903
BY W. H. GANNETT
Copyright 1896, 1899, 1903, 1905, 1913
BY DODD, MEAD AND
COMPANY
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
DEDICATIONS
LYRICS OF LOWLY LIFE
TO
MY MOTHER
LYRICS OF THE HEARTHSIDE
TO
ALICE

LYRICS OF LOVE AND LAUGHTER
TO
MISS CATHERINE IMPEY
LYRICS OF SUNSHINE AND SHADOW
TO
MRS. FRANK CONOVER
WITH THANKS FOR HER LONG
BELIEF
INTRODUCTION TO LYRICS OF LOWLY LIFE
I think I should scarcely trouble the reader with a special appeal in
behalf of this book, if it had not specially appealed to me for reasons
apart from the author's race, origin, and condition. The world is too old
now, and I find myself too much of its mood, to care for the work of a
poet because he is black, because his father and mother were slaves,
because he was, before and after he began to write poems, an
elevator-boy. These facts would certainly attract me to him as a man, if
I knew him to have a literary ambition, but when it came to his literary
art, I must judge it irrespective of these facts, and enjoy or endure it for
what it was in itself.
It seems to me that this was my experience with the poetry of Paul
Laurence Dunbar when I found it in another form, and in justice to him
I cannot wish that it should be otherwise with his readers here. Still, it
will legitimately interest those who like to know the causes, or, if these
may not be known, the sources, of things, to learn that the father and
mother of the first poet of his race in our language were negroes
without admixture of white blood. The father escaped from slavery in
Kentucky to freedom in Canada, while there was still no hope of
freedom otherwise; but the mother was freed by the events of the civil
war, and came North to Ohio, where their son was born at Dayton, and
grew up with such chances and mischances for mental training as
everywhere befall the children of the poor. He has told me that his

father picked up the trade of a plasterer, and when he had taught
himself to read, loved chiefly to read history. The boy's mother shared
his passion for literature, with a special love of poetry, and after the
father died she struggled on in more than the poverty she had shared
with him. She could value the faculty which her son showed first in
prose sketches and attempts at fiction, and she was proud of the praise
and kindness they won him among the people of the town, where he
has never been without the warmest and kindest friends.
In fact from every part of Ohio and from several cities of the adjoining
States, there came letters in cordial appreciation of the critical
recognition which it was my pleasure no less than my duty to offer Paul
Dunbar's work in another place. It seemed to me a happy omen for him
that so many people who had known him, or known of him, were glad
of a stranger's good word; and it was gratifying to see that at home he
was esteemed for the things he had done rather than because as the son
of negro slaves he had done them. If a prophet is often without honor in
his own country, it surely is nothing against him when he has it. In this
case it deprived me of the glory of a discoverer; but that is sometimes a
barren joy, and I am always willing to forego it.
What struck me in reading Mr. Dunbar's poetry was what had already
struck his friends in Ohio and Indiana,