The class of poems to follow will afford a contrast. They will bear witness to that pride of race, perhaps, which we of the white race have commended to the colored people:
DAYBREAK
Awake! Arise! Men of my race—
I see our morning star,
And feel the dawn breeze on my face
Creep inward from afar.
I feel the dawn, with soft-like tread,
Steal through our lingering night,
Aglow with flame our sky to spread
In floods of morning light.
Arise, my men! Be wide-awake
To hear the bugle call
For Negroes everywhere to break
The bands that bind us all.
Great Lincoln, now with glory graced,
All Godlike with the pen,
Our chattel fetters broke and placed
Us in the ranks of men.
But even he could not awake
The dead, nor make alive,
Nor change stern Nature’s laws, which make
The fittest to survive.
Let every man his soul inure
In noblest sacrifice,
And with a heart of oak endure
Ignoble, arrant prejudice.
