Great God! I dare not question Thee—
Thy way eternally is just;
This seeming mystery to me
Will be revealed, if I but trust;
Ah, Thou alone dost know the cost
When one has lived and loved and lost.
The following sonnet, entitled “The New Negro,” will serve to represent much of Watkins’s verse:
He thinks in black. His God is but the same
John saw—with hair “like wool” and eyes “as fire”—
Who makes the visions for which men aspire.
His kin is Jesus and the Christ who came
Humbly to earth and wrought His hallowed aim
’Midst human scorn. Pure is his heart’s desire;
His life’s religion lifts; his faith leads higher.
Love is his Church, and Union is its name.
Lo, he has learned his own immortal rôle
In this momentous drama of the hour;
Has read aright the heavens’ Scriptural scroll
’Bove ancient wrong—long boasting in its tower.
Ah, he has sensed the truth. Deep in his soul
He feels the manly majesty of power.
The protest not infrequently takes the form of entreaty and appeal, sometimes the form of an invocation of divine wrath upon the doers of evil. The following poem from Watkins, unique and effective in form and biblical phrasing, is the kind of appeal that will not out of the mind:
