The poems in this post are selected from three different anthologies devoted to Black poets, all originally published in the 1920s. Among the poets included in these collections are W.E.B. DuBois and Langston Hughes, but these selections will come from less well-known authors.
Paul Lawrence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar was born in 1872 to formerly enslaved parents. Among other early accomplishments, he edited the first Black newspaper in Dayton, Ohio, which was printed by his high-school classmates Orville and WIlbur Wright. His poetry was well-regarded, and he was the first African-American poet to gain wide acceptance nationally. However, editors preferred the poetry he wrote in dialect rather than his more traditional work. With that in mind, I’ve picked two of his more traditional works.
Dunbar was married to another poet who’ll be featured later, Alice Dunbar Nelson; she left him after years of abuse that ended when he nearly killed her. Dunbar died at the age of 33 of tuberculosis, but left behind a range of work that included novels and plays as well as poetry. His poem “Sympathy” includes the line “I know why the caged bird sings!”, used by Maya Angelou as the title of her autobiography.
SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT
Out in the sky the great dark clouds are massing;
I look far out into the pregnant night,
Where I can hear a solemn booming gun
And catch the gleaming of a random light,
That tells me that the ship I seek is passing, passing.
My tearful eyes my soul's deep hurt are glassing;
For I would hail and check that ship of ships.
I stretch my hands imploring, cry aloud,
My voice falls dead a foot from mine own lips,
And but its ghost doth reach that vessel, passing, passing.
O Earth, O Sky, O Ocean, both surpassing,
O heart of mine, O soul that dreads the dark!
Is there no hope for me? Is there no way
That I may sight and check that speeding bark
Which out of sight and sound is passing, passing?
THE HAUNTED OAK
Pray why are you so bare, so bare,
Oh, bough of the old oak-tree;
And why, when I go through the shade you throw,
Runs a shudder over me?
My leaves were green as the best, I trow,
And sap ran free in my veins,
But I saw in the moonlight dim and weird
A guiltless victim's pains.
I bent me down to hear his sigh;
I shook with his gurgling moan,
And I trembled sore when they rode away,
And left him here alone.
They'd charged him with the old, old crime,
And set him fast in jail:
Oh, why does the dog howl all night long,
And why does the night wind wail?
He prayed his prayer and he swore his oath,
And he raised his hand to the sky;
But the beat of hoofs smote on his ear,
And the steady tread drew nigh.
Who is it rides by night, by night,
Over the moonlit road?
And what is the spur that keeps the pace,
What is the galling goad?
And now they beat at the prison door,
"Ho, keeper, do not stay!
We are friends of him whom you hold within,
And we fain would take him away
"From those who ride fast on our heels
With mind to do him wrong;
They have no care for his innocence,
And the rope they bear is long."
They have fooled the jailer with lying words,
They have fooled the man with lies;
The bolts unbar, the locks are drawn,
And the great door open flies.
Now they have taken him from the jail,
And hard and fast they ride,
And the leader laughs low down in his throat,
As they halt my trunk beside.
Oh, the judge, he wore a mask of black,
And the doctor one of white,
And the minister, with his oldest son,
Was curiously bedight.
Oh, foolish man, why weep you now?
'Tis but a little space,
And the time will come when these shall dread
The mem'ry of your face.
I feel the rope against my bark,
And the weight of him in my grain,
I feel in the throe of his final woe
The touch of my own last pain.
And never more shall leaves come forth
On a bough that bears the ban;
I am burned with dread, I am dried and dead,
From the curse of a guiltless man.
And ever the judge rides by, rides by,
And goes to hunt the deer,
And ever another rides his soul
In the guise of a mortal fear.
And ever the man he rides me hard,
And never a night stays he;
For I feel his curse as a haunted bough
On the trunk of a haunted tree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Laurence_Dunbar
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Paul-Laurence-Dunbar
https://poets.org/poet/paul-laurence-dunbar
https://poets.org/poet/paul-laurence-dunbar#tabbed-content
Georgia Douglas Johnson
Georgia Douglas Johnson was an early Black playwright as well as a poet. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia and grew up in the area, eventually teaching school in Marietta and serving as an assistant principal in Atlanta. She also studied music at Oberlin. Married to a career politician, she eventually moved to Washington, DC, where she began her career as a poet. As a playwright, she was quite prolific, but her plays were not as well received as her poetry, largely because of her gender and race, as well as her subject matter, which addressed racial inequality and the violence inflicted against the Black community. She died in 1966, and was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame in 2009.
THE HEART OF A WOMAN
The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o'er life's turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
The heart of a woman falls back with the night,
And enters some alien cage in its plight,
And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars
While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.
I WANT TO DIE WHILE YOU LOVE ME
I want to die while you love me,
While yet you hold me fair,
While laughter lies upon my lips
And lights are in my hair.
I want to die while you love me,
And bear to that still bed,
Your kisses turbulent, unspent
To warm me when I'm dead.
I want to die while you love me
Oh, who would care to live
Till love has nothing more to ask
And nothing more to give!
I want to die while you love me
And never, never see
The glory of this perfect day
Grow dim or cease to be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Douglas_Johnson
https://www.thoughtco.com/georgia-douglas-johnson-3529263
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/georgia-douglas-johnson
https://georgiawritershalloffame.org/honorees/georgia-douglas-johnson
The poems in this post were all collected in the anthology The Book of American Negro Poetry, published in 1922. The full text can be found below in downloadable format. It includes an introductory essay that includes elements considered problematic to modern readers. In other words, it’s hella racist from a modern point of view.
https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Book_of_American_Negro_Poetry/PgJaAAAAMAAJ?hl=en