Who, over icy walls of prejudice,
Where twice ten thousand gorgon monsters hiss,
Did scale the peak and make the steep ascent;
For which great feat ye had small precedent.
There were who said: “The Negro is not fit
To write good prose, much less to rhyme with wit”;
That nothing ever Negroes could inspire
With Spenser’s fancy or with Shakespere’s fire:
With Dryden’s vigor, with the ease of Pope,
To weave the iambic pentametric rope,
But ye, immortal sons of Afric, ye
Have proved these charges gross absurdity;
That old Dame Nature’s no respecter in
Regard to person or the hue of skin.
Omnific God, at whose fiatic hand
Did primogenial light deluge the land;
Whose word supreme did out of chaos draw
A world, and order made its guiding law,
Bequeath’d like talents to the black and white;
To read form’d some and others made to write;
To govern these, and those to governed be,
And you, great twain, endued with poesy!
II. Commemorative and Occasional
From this body of Negro verse which I have been describing and giving specimens of may be selected pieces commemorative of days and seasons that are quite up to the standard of similar pieces provided for white children in their school-readers. These selections will further illustrate
