Books by Countee Cullen

Color Copper Sun The Ballad of the Brown Girl The Medea The Lost Zoo My Lives and How I Lost Them On These I Stand One Way to Heaven

Edited by Countee Cullen

Caroling Dusk

CAROLING DUSK

An Anthology of Verse by Negro Poets Edited by COUNTEE CULLEN

HARPER & ROW, PUBLISHERS New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London

CAROLING DUSK. Copyright 1927 by Harper & Brothers. Copyright renewed 1955 by Ida M. Cullen. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N. Y. 10022. Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside Limited, Toronto.

ISBN: 0-06-010926-2 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 27-23175

[Pg v]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

For permission to use the poems in this anthology, the editor wishes to thank the poets represented, and the following magazines and publishers:

Dodd, Mead and Co. for poems from The Collected Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar Boni and Liveright for poems from Cane by Jean Toomer Alfred A. Knopf for poems from The Weary Blues and Fine Clothes to the Jew by Langston Hughes The Viking Press for “The Creation” from God’s Trombones by James Weldon Johnson The Cornhill Publishing Co. for poems from The Band of Gideon by Joseph S. Cotter, and from Fifty Years and other Poems by James Weldon Johnson, and from The Heart of a Woman by Georgia Douglas Johnson Harcourt, Brace & Co. for poems from Harlem Shadows by Claude McKay and for A Litany of Atlanta by W. E. B. DuBois Harper & Brothers for poems from Color and Copper Sun by Countee Cullen B. J. Brimmer Co. for poems from Bronze by Georgia Douglas Johnson Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life for Desolate and My House by Claude McKay; Old Black Men by Georgia Douglas Johnson; Summer Matures, Fulfillment, The Road by Helene Johnson; Portrait by George Leonard Allen; For the Candlelight by Angelina Weld Grimké; The Return, Golgotha Is a Mountain, The Day Breakers, and God

Give to Men by Arna Bontemps; I Have a Rendezvous With Life by Countee Cullen; Lines Written [Pg vi]at the Grave of Alexander Dumas and Hatred by Gwendolyn B. Bennett; Joy, Solace, Interim by Clarissa Scott Delany; Confession by Donald Jeffrey Hayes; On Seeing Two Brown Boys In a Catholic Church and To a Persistent Phantom by Frank Horne; Poem by Blanche Taylor Dickinson; The New Negro by James Edward McCall; The Tragedy of Pete and The Wayside Well by Joseph S. Cotter, Sr.; No Images by Waring Cuney; Northboun’ by Lucy Ariel Williams; Shadow by Richard Bruce; The Resurrection by Jonathan H. Brooks; Africa and Transformation by Lewis Alexander The Conning Tower of the New York World for Noblesse Oblige by Jessie Redmond Fauset The Crisis for That Hill by Blanche Taylor Dickinson; Nocturne at Bethesda by Arna Bontemps; Letters Found Near a Suicide by Frank Horne; Morning Light by Mary Effie Lee Newsome; Dunbar by Anne Spencer The Century for My City by James Weldon Johnson Vanity Fair for Bottled by Helene Johnson Palms for A Tree Design by Arna Bontemps; Lines to a

Nasturtium by Anne Spencer; Black Madonna by Albert Rice; Words! Words! by Jessie Fauset; Magula by Helene Johnson; and The Mask by Clarissa Scott Delany Fire for Jungle Taste by Edward S. Silvera; Length of Moon by Arna Bontemps; The Death Bed by Waring Cuney The World Tomorrow for A Black Man Talks of Reaping by Arna Bontemps The Survey for Russian Cathedral by Claude McKay The Atlantic Monthly for Nativity and The Serving Girl by Gladys Casley Hayford The Carolina Magazine for The Dark Brother by Lewis Alexander

[Pg vii]

FOREWORD

It is now five years since James Weldon Johnson edited with a brilliant essay on “The Negro’s Creative Genius” The Book of American Negro Poetry, four years since the publication of Robert T. Kerlin’s Negro Poets and Their Poems, and three years since from the Trinity College Press in Durham, North Carolina, came An Anthology of Verse by American Negroes, edited by Newman Ivey White and Walter Clinton Jackson. The student of verse by American Negro poets will find in these three anthologies comprehensive treatment of the work of Negro poets from Phyllis Wheatley, the first American Negro known to have composed verses, to writers of the present day. With Mr. Johnson’s scholarly and painstaking survey, from both a historical and a critical standpoint, of the entire range of verse by American Negroes, and with Professor Kerlin’s inclusions of excerpts from the work of most of those Negro poets whose poems were extant at the time of his compilation, there would be scant reason for the assembling and publication of another such collection were it not for the new voices

that within the past three to five years have sung so significantly as to make imperative an anthology recording some snatches of their songs. To those intelligently familiar with what is popularly termed the renaissance in art and literature [Pg viii]by Negroes, it will not be taken as a sentimentally risky observation to contend that the recent yearly contests conducted by Negro magazines, such as Opportunity and The Crisis, as well as a growing tendency on the part of white editors to give impartial consideration to the work of Negro writers, have awakened to a happy articulation many young Negro poets who had thitherto lisped only in isolated places in solitary numbers. It is primarily to give them a concerted hearing that this collection has been published. For most of these poets the publication of individual volumes of their poems is not an immediate issue. However, many of their poems during these four or five years of accentuated interest in the artistic development of the race have become familiar to a large

and ever-widening circle of readers who, we feel, will welcome a volume marshaling what would otherwise remain for some time a miscellany of deeply appreciated but scattered verse.

The place of poetry in the cultural development of a race or people has always been one of importance; indeed, poets are prone, with many good reasons for their conceit, to hold their art the most important. Thus while essentially wishing to draw the public ear to the work of the younger Negro poets, there have been included with their poems those of modern Negro poets already established and acknowledged, by virtue of their seniority and published books, as worthy practitioners of their art. There were Negro poets before Paul Laurence Dunbar, but his uniquity as the first Negro to attain to and maintain a distinguished place among [Pg ix]American poets, a place fairly merited by the most acceptable standards of criticism, makes him the pivotal poet of this volume.

I have called this collection an anthology of verse by Negro poets rather than an anthology of Negro verse, since this latter designation would be more confusing than accurate. Negro poetry, it seems to me, in the sense that we speak of Russian, French, or Chinese poetry, must emanate from some country other than this in some language other than our own. Moreover, the attempt to corral the outbursts of the ebony muse into some definite mold to which all poetry by Negroes will conform seems altogether futile and aside from the facts. This country’s Negro writers may here and there turn some singular facet toward the literary sun, but in the main, since theirs is also the heritage of the English language, their work will not present any serious aberration from the poetic tendencies of their times. The conservatives, the middlers, and the arch heretics will be found among them as among the white poets; and to say that the pulse beat of their verse shows generally such a fever, or the symptoms of such an ague, will prove on closer examination merely the moment’s exaggeration of

a physician anxious to establish a new literary ailment. As heretical as it may sound, there is the probability that Negro poets, dependent as they are on the English language, may have more to gain from the rich background of English and American poetry than from any nebulous atavistic yearnings toward an African inheritance. Some of the poets herein represented [Pg x]will eventually find inclusion in any discriminatingly ordered anthology of American verse, and there will be no reason for giving such selections the needless distinction of a separate section marked Negro verse.

While I do not feel that the work of these writers conforms to anything that can be called the Negro school of poetry, neither do I feel that their work is varied to the point of being sensational; rather is theirs a variety within a uniformity that is trying to maintain the higher traditions of English verse. I trust the selections here presented bear out this contention. The poet writes out of his experience, whether it be personal or vicarious, and as these experiences differ among other poets, so do they differ among Negro poets; for the double obligation of being both Negro and American is not so unified as we are often led to believe. A survey of the work of Negro poets will show that the individual diversifying ego transcends the synthesizing hue. From the roots of varied experiences have flowered the dialect of Dunbar, the recent sermon poems of James Weldon Johnson, and some of Helene Johnson’s more colloquial verses, which, differing essentially only in a few expressions peculiar to Negro slang, are worthy counterparts of verses done by John V. A.

Weaver “in American.” Attempt to hedge all these in with a name, and your imagination must deny the facts. Langston Hughes, poetizing the blues in his zeal to represent the Negro masses, and Sterling Brown, combining a similar interest in such poems as “Long Gone” and “The Odyssey of Big Boy” with a capacity for turning a neat sonnet [Pg xi]according to the rules, represent differences as unique as those between Burns and Whitman. Jessie Fauset with Cornell University and training at the Sorbonne as her intellectual equipment surely justifies the very subjects and forms of her poems: “Touché,” “La Vie C’est la Vie,” “Noblesse Oblige,” etc.; while Lewis Alexander, with no known degree from the University of Tokyo, is equally within the province of his creative prerogatives in composing Japanese hokkus and tankas. Although Anne Spencer lives in Lynchburg, Virginia, and in her biographical note recognizes the Negro as the great American taboo, I have seen but two poems by her which are even remotely

concerned with this subject; rather does she write with a cool precision that calls forth comparison with Amy Lowell and the influence of a rock-bound seacoast. And Lula Lowe Weeden, the youngest poet in the volume, living in the same Southern city, is too young to realize that she is colored in an environment calculated to impress her daily with the knowledge of this pigmentary anomaly.

There are lights and shades of difference even in their methods of decrying race injustices, where these peculiar experiences of Negro life cannot be overlooked. Claude McKay is most exercised, rebellious, and vituperative to a degree that clouds his lyricism in many instances, but silhouettes most forcibly his high dudgeon; while neither Arna Bontemps, at all times cool, calm, and intensely religious, nor Georgia Douglas Johnson, in many instances bearing up bravely under comparison with Sara Teasdale, takes advantage of the [Pg xii]numerous opportunities offered them for rhymed polemics.

If dialect is missed in this collection, it is enough to state that the day of dialect as far as Negro poets are concerned is in the decline. Added to the fact that these poets are out of contact with this fast-dying medium, certain sociological considerations and the natural limitations of dialect for poetic expression militate against its use even as a tour de force. In a day when artificiality is so vigorously condemned, the Negro poet would be foolish indeed to turn to dialect. The majority of present-day poems in dialect are the efforts of white poets.

This anthology, by no means offered as the anthology of verse by Negro poets, is but a prelude, we hope, to that fuller symphony which Negro poets will in time contribute to the national literature, and we shall be sadly disappointed if the next few years do not find this collection entirely outmoded.

The biographical notices carried with these poems have been written by the poets themselves save in three cases (Dunbar’s having been written by his wife, the younger Cotter’s by his father, and Lula Weeden’s by her mother), and if they do not reveal to a curious public all it might wish to know about the poets, they at least reveal all that the poets deem necessary and discreet for the public to know.

Countee Cullen.

[Pg xiii]

PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

Paul Laurence Dunbar. Born, Dayton, Ohio, June 27, 1872. Educated in public schools, and graduated from Dayton High School, where he achieved some distinction. Editor of school paper, and noted as a versifier, from his grammar-school days. Printed his first book, Oak and Ivy, in 1893.

Two friends of his early manhood helped most to shape his career, and to encourage him in his days of struggle—Dr. H. A. Tobey, the celebrated alienist of Toledo, Ohio, and Frederick Douglass. The former helped him to bring his second book, Majors and Minors, before the public; the latter, with whom he was associated in the Negro Building at the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1893, was the hero of the poet’s dreams, the one to whom he dedicated two of his most serious poems.

Although Dunbar is remembered largely for his dialect verse, it was never his intention to concentrate on dialect. His poems in pure English constitute the greater bulk of his verse, and that to which he was most passionately devoted. The tragedy of his life was that the world “turned to praise the jingle in a broken tongue.” His friendship for Booker Washington and a visit to Tuskegee inspired him to write the Tuskegee School Song, which is sung to the tune of “Fair Harvard.”

The famous criticism of Majors and Minors by William Dean Howells in Harper’s Weekly, June 27, 1897 established Dunbar’s prestige as an important figure in American literature. From that time his success was assured.

He was married to Alice Ruth Moore of New Orleans, a teacher in Brooklyn, N. Y., in March, 1898.

[Pg 2]

He was as indefatigable a writer of prose as of poetry; short stories, novels, criticism, essays and some short plays poured from his pen. His published works, exclusive of the two volumes of verse mentioned above, are: Lyrics of Lowly Life, Lyrics of the Hearthside, Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow; several smaller volumes, illustrated editions of poems in the preceding volumes; short stories, Folks from Dixie, The Strength of Gideon; novels, The Uncalled, The Fanatics, The Love of Landry, The Sport of the Gods.

He died in Dayton, Ohio, February 9, 1906.

Alice Dunbar Nelson.

ERE SLEEP COMES DOWN TO SOOTHE THE WEARY EYES⁠[1]

DEATH SONG⁠[2]

LIFE⁠[3]

AFTER THE QUARREL⁠[4]

SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT⁠[5]

[Pg 8]

WE WEAR THE MASK⁠[6]

SYMPATHY⁠[7]

THE DEBT⁠[8]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

[2] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

[3] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

[4] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

[5] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

[6] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

[7] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

[8] Copyright 1896 by Dodd, Mead & Company, Inc.

JOSEPH S. COTTER, SR.

“I was born in Nelson County, Ky., February 2nd, 1861, on a farm owned by my great grandfather, Daniel Stapp, a tanner. In 1829 he bought himself and a part of his master’s farm. Later he bought his daughter, Lucinda, my mother’s mother.

Martha, my mother, was born on a nearby farm owned by her English-Indian father, Fleming Vaughan. Prior to my birth she lived in Bardstown and was a servant at “My Old Kentucky Home.” She took me to Bardstown soon after my birth and brought me to Louisville in my fourth week, and here I have lived ever since.

I attended a private school and could read before my fourth year. Conditions were such that my attendance at school was very irregular. I quit school in my eighth year, having completed the third grade, and did not return until my twenty-second year.

During this time I picked up rags in the streets and worked in tobacco factories and brick-yards. My nineteenth year found me a distiller in one of the largest distilleries in Kentucky. A turn of fortune made me a teamster. I hauled cotton and tobacco and made up my mind to enter the prize ring. Another turn of fortune put me into a Louisville public night school. Here I [Pg 11]began in the third grade where I left off in my eighth year.

At the end of two school sessions of five months each I was promoted to the high school. I keep this diploma under lock and key, for it is the only one I have ever received.

The man who turned my attention from prize-fighting to night school and then to school teaching, and who discovered my knack for writing verses, was Dr. W. T. Peyton of Louisville. He was my greatest benefactor.

My talent of whatever kind comes from Martha, my mother. She was poet, story-teller, dramatist and musician. My published works are: A Rhyming, Links of Friendship, Caleb, the Degenerate, a poetic drama, A White Song And A Black One and Negro Tales. My unpublished works are: Life’s Dawn And Dusk, poems, Caesar Driftwood and Other One Act Plays and My Mother And Her Family.”

THE TRAGEDY OF PETE

[Pg 15]

THE WAY-SIDE WELL

JAMES WELDON JOHNSON

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Fla. He graduated from Atlanta University with the degree of A. B., and he received the degree of A. M. from the same University in 1904. He spent three years in graduate work at Columbia University in the City of New York. The honorary degree of Litt.D. was conferred upon him by Talladega College, Talladega, Ala., in 1917, and by Howard University in 1923.

For several years Mr. Johnson was principal of the [Pg 16]colored high school at Jacksonville. He was admitted to the Florida bar in 1897, and practiced law in Jacksonville, until 1901, when he moved to New York to collaborate with his brother, J. Rosamond Johnson, in writing for the light opera stage.

In 1906, he was appointed United States Consul at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, being transferred as Consul to Corinto, Nicaragua, in 1909. While in Corinto, he looked after the interests of his country during the stormy days of revolution which resulted in the downfall of Zelaya, and through the abortive revolution against Diaz.

His knowledge of Spanish has been put to use in the translation of a number of Spanish plays. He was the translator for the English libretto of Goyescas, the Spanish grand opera produced by the Metropolitan Opera Company in 1915.

Mr. Johnson was for ten years the Contributing Editor of the New York Age. He added to his distinction as a newspaper writer by winning in an editorial contest one of three prizes offered by the Philadelphia Public Ledger in 1916. His poems have appeared in the Century, the Independent, the Crisis and other publications.

In the spring of 1920, Mr. Johnson was sent by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to the black republic of Haiti, where he made an investigation of U. S. misrule. The charges which Mr. Johnson published in The Nation, of New York, upon his return were taken up by Senator Harding, and as a consequence a Naval Board of Inquiry was sent to Haiti and a Congressional Investigation promised. The articles published in The Nation have since been republished in a pamphlet entitled, “Self-Determining Haiti.”