Page:Negro poets and their poems (IA negropoetstheirp00kerl).pdf/259

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THE POETRY OF PROTEST
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sense of art set a limit.—He was born in a cabin at Chesterfield, Virginia, struggled in the usual Lucian B. Watkins way for the rudiments of book-knowledge, became a teacher, then a soldier. His health was wrecked in the World War. He died before his powers were matured.—Short and simple are the annals of the poet. Before one of his intenser race poems I shall give his last lyric cry, uttered but a few days before his lingering death:

My fallen star has spent its light
And left but memory to me;
My day of dream has kissed the night
Farewell, its sun no more I see;
My summer bloomed for winter’s frost:
Alas, I’ve lived and loved and lost!

What matters it to-day should earth
Lay on my head a gold-bright crown
Lit with the gems of royal worth
Befitting well a king’s renown?—
My lonely soul is trouble-tossed,
For I have lived and loved and lost.