Born in New York City, May 30, 1903, and reared in the conservative atmosphere of a Methodist parsonage, Countee Cullen’s chief problem has been that of reconciling a Christian upbringing with a pagan inclination. His life so far has not convinced him that the problem is insoluble. Educated in the elementary and high schools of New York City, with an A.B. degree and a Phi Beta Kappa Key from New York University, an M.A. from Harvard, arrantly opposed to any form of enforced racial segregation, he finds it a matter of growing regret that no part of his academic education has been drawn from a racial school. As a poet he is a rank conservative, loving the measured line and the skillful rhyme; but not blind to the virtues of those poets who will not be circumscribed; and he is thankful indeed for the knowledge that should he ever desire to go adventuring, the world is rife with paths to choose from. He has said, perhaps with a reiteration sickening to some of his friends, that he wishes any merit that may be in his work to flow from it solely as the expression of a poet--with no racial consideration to bolster it up. He is still of the same thought. At present he is employed as Assistant Editor of _Opportunity, A Journal of Negro Life_. His published works are _Color_, _The Ballad of the Brown Girl_, and _Copper Sun_. LINES TO OUR ELDERS You too listless to examine If in pestilence or famine Death lurk least, a hungry gamin Gnawing on you like a beaver On a root, while you trifle Time away nodding in the sun, Careless how the shadows crawl Surely up your crumbling wall, Heedless of the Thief’s footfall, Death’s, whose nimble fingers rifle Your heartbeats one by weary one,-- Here’s the difference in our dying: You go dawdling, we go flying. Here’s a thought flung out to plague you: Ours the pleasure if we’d liever Burn completely with the fever Than go ambling with the ague. I HAVE A RENDEZVOUS WITH LIFE (With apologies to the memory of Alan Seeger) I have a rendezvous with Life In days I hope will come Ere youth has sped and strength of mind, Ere voices sweet grown dumb; I have a rendezvous with Life When Spring’s first heralds hum. It may be I shall greet her soon, Shall riot at her behest; It may be I shall seek in vain The peace of her downy breast; Yet I would keep this rendezvous, And deem all hardships sweet, If at the end of the long white way, There Life and I shall meet. Sure some will cry it better far To crown their days in sleep, Than face the wind, the road, and rain, To heed the falling deep; Though wet, nor blow, nor space I fear, Yet fear I deeply, too, Lest Death shall greet and claim me ere I keep Life’s rendezvous. PROTEST