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 cap 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. Significant as interpreting the character and temper of the Negro with whom today the white world has to deal, are the following lines from the blank verse 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 your hour of need, They hold in them enough of you to feel All that has made you masters in your time-- The power of art and wealth, unending toil, Proud types of beauty, an unbounded will To triumph, wondrous science, and old law-- These have they learned to value and to share. 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. A sonnet entitled _To a Caged Canary in a Negro Restaurant_ will present the poet's people and his own manner of poetic musing: 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