touched his heart and found a place, though a minor one, in his compositions.
But the sister art of poetry may anticipate music in the great feat of embodying artistically the yearning, suffering, prayerful soul of the African in those centuries when he could only with patience endure and trust in God—and wail these mournfullest of melodies. Some lyrical drama like “Prometheus Bound,” but more touching as being more human; some epic like “Paradise Lost,” but nearer to the common heart of man, and more lyrical; some “Divina Commedia,” that shall be the voice of those silent centuries of slavery, as Dante’s poem was the voice of the long-silent epoch preceding it, or some lyrical “passion play” like that of Oberammergau, is the not improbable achievement of some descendant of the slaves.
In a poem of tender appeal, James Weldon Johnson has celebrated the "black and unknown bards," who, without art, and even without letters, produced from their hearts, weighed down with sorrows, the immortal Spirituals:
O black and unknown bards of long ago,
How came your lips to touch the sacred fire?
How, in your darkness, did you come to know
The power and beauty of the minstrel’s lyre?
Who first from midst his bonds lifted his eyes?
Who first from out the still watch, lone and long,
Feeling the ancient faith of prophets rise
Within his dark-kept soul, burst into song?
